Mayor de Blasio is happy to force private employers to give new perks to their workers, but it’s another story ent𝓡irely when it comes to the city’s own employee🔜s.
De Blasio last Thursday embraced a mandate of two weeks’ paid vacation for all businesses with as few as five employees. The next day, he got called out for his refusal to gi🃏ve all city workers the same paid family leave that theಌ private sector must provide.
A pregnant FDNY trauma specialist called into the mayor’s weekly W💖NYC show to complain.
“How is the state and the city government implementing an act that requires🥂 private emplಞoyers to provide something for the city and the government that the city and the government refuses to provide for their own workers?” she asked.
De Blasio blamed her union. He explained that teachers and someꦦ other city employees get paid parental leave because they gave up other benefits in exchange. “If your union wants to, right now, negotiate that with us, we’re ready,” the mayor told the caller.
Got tha♏t🔥? He thinks private-sector workers shouldn’t have to “pay for” a new benefit, but public-sector ones should.
And never mind that the busines🌠ses that would get hit by his vacation mandate aren’t big corporations, which overwhelmingly already offer the time, but much smaller and low-profit-margin shops — particul༺arly in the ailing retail sector.
He’s absolutely right, of course, that taxpayers can’t afford to simply grant new benefits to city workers (although he has violated that principle in practice quite a few times). But he won’t consider the possibility that his headline-winning poꦓlicy could drive some people out of business entirely.
That’s the twisted understanding of “fairness” behind his talk of making New York “the fairest big city inꦬ America.”