How about indexing civil service salaries to tax revenue? Revenues up, salaries up; revenues down, salaries down. This would be a non-political issue, since all politicians are interested in increasing revenue, and would cushion the blow to civil servants by eliminating the layoff as a solution to a revenue problem. Salaries would be designated as a percent of collections, an eminently fair index. Workers could still bargain for their slice of the pie, but not for more pie.