Manchester aldermen considering caving to public school unions need to take a long pause to consider Tuesday’s news from Wisconsin.

In that state, which President Obama won by 14 points in 2008, public sector unions were trounced by taxpayers who have had enough of being forced to fund lavish pay and benefits while being told that they are cruel, heartless and uncaring for not wanting to finance ever larger increases in those same pay and benefits packages.

Public sector unions got 900,000 signatures to have Republican Gov. Scott Walker recalled for proposing and signing laws stripping the unions of their collective bargaining rights, allowing public employees to work without joining a union, and forbidding the unions from collecting member dues automatically. Walker won handily.

It turns out that taxpayers don’t appreciate being used and abused by public employee unions. Nor do public employees. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that as a result of Walker’s reforms, “Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees ... fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011.” An AFL-CIO poll in Wisconsin found that 14 percent of Wisconsin union voters oppose collective bargaining for public employees, The Atlantic reported.

Cave to public employee unions after Tuesday? Why?