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Living Wage Bill Faces Major Pushback

NEW YORK CITY-Mayor Bloomberg has already spoken against the legislation, which would set a wage floor for jobs created by projects that receive city subsidies.

By Paul Bubny | Updated on May 25, 2010

NEW YORK CITY-With a rally on the steps of City Hall, a broad coalition of lawmakers, community groups and labor unions has launched the Living Wage NYC campaign, centering around a bill introduced to the City Council on Tuesday. The bill, which would set a wage floor of $10 per hour plus benefits for jobs generated from development projects receiving at least $100,000 in subsidies, is likely to encounter substantial pushback, not least from Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“The issue here is there are a bunch of projects that don’t work on their own, and the city thinks that they have merit, and so we subsidize them,” Bloomberg told reporters Monday. “Those are not projects that could stand higher costs. If anything, they have lower costs. And I think if you had a bill like that, a lot of them just would not go through.”

Referring to last December’s City Council 45-1 vote to oppose the rezoning of Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx due to the developer’s refusal to guarantee a living wage for workers at the 575,000-square-foot mixed-use project, Bloomberg said that instead of having the jobs and stores that the project would have produced, “we have nothing. And that’s exactly what this bill would do. It’s a nice idea, but is poorly thought out and will not work.”

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