To some, the situation seems dire: most of Broadway staying dark as the bustling holiday season begins, restaurants losing customers at a critical money-making time and the striking stagehands trudging picket lines in the bitter cold. þþBut to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has adopted his familiar “What, me worry?” stance in this latest labor dispute, things do not look all that bad.þþ“In the overall grand scheme of things, it’s hard to come up with a number that would hurt this city,” Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday at a news conference in Grand Central Terminal, answering questions about the strike’s economic impact. “I think what it hurts more is our reputation, and it’s the psychic things rather than dollars. Our hotels will still be full, our restaurants will still be full, mass transit will still be going along.”þþUnlike some of his predecessors, Mr. Bloomberg has not generally favored using the bully pulpit in labor conflicts to take sides or bludgeon parties into resolving their differences. With the notable exceptions of disputes with transit workers in 2002 and 2005, in which he used threats, Mr. Bloomberg has mostly preferred to help midwife solutions in private.þþThus far, that approach, coupled with behind-the-scenes lobbying by the mayor and his aides for both sides to resume negotiations, has served him well. þþThere has not yet been a groundswell of blame for the mayor, with most of the major groups affected by the strike saying it is a struggle between private entities over which Mr. Bloomberg has little control. But that could change, some experts say, if the strike stretches on for weeks and Mr. Bloomberg’s publicly hands-off manner begins to seem merely inert.þþ“If Broadway is really put on long-term ice and he is seen as having failed to aggressively deal with this, there could be some political pressure,” said Joshua B. Freeman, a labor historian at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. þþBut, Professor Freeman said, because City Hall is not as closely associated with the theaters and their employees as it is with, for instance, the transit union, “he doesn’t have as partisan an interest as he does in those kinds of issues.”þþIn addition, although Mr. Bloomberg has been careful to express concern for the industry, its related businesses and those who work for them, aides say the city is more insulated from the economic fallout from the strike than it was during the strike by Broadway musicians in 2003, when tourism numbers were lower.þþFor the moment, government officials and some of the people affected by the strike say the only solution lies with the union and the producers.þþ“I don’t see how anybody can do anything besides the producers and the union,” said Chuck Hunt, a spokesman for the New York State Restaurant Association, a trade group, adding that the mayor had made “a very good effort.”þþLuis Nunez, president of the Latino Restaurant Association, which represents 4,000 establishments, also praised Mr. Bloomberg, saying that if anything, state officials — including Gov. Eliot Spitzer; Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the majority leader; and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — should be taking a more active role.þþ“The restaurants don’t deserve to be hit the way they are being hit,” he said, adding that income was down 55 percent in the theater district. “It’s just killing the business.”þþBut Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association, disagreed.þþ“It’s been the mayor’s traditional perspective to kind of let things move on their own inertia,” he said. “But in this case, the reverberations are so significant that he should be taking a more active role.”þþOthers pointed to Mr. Bloomberg’s successful, if low-key, intervention in the short-lived musicians’ strike, when the city’s overall economic standing was far more precarious.þþ“I think the mayor has done the right thing in offering to help,” said City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who represents the theater district and is a potential candidate for mayor in 2009. “The mayor’s been very clear that he’s there to help. It’s help that I wish people would heed because it’s help that actually brought resolution during the musicians’ strike, but that’s all the mayor can do, is stand at the ready.”þþ
Source: NY Times
