NEW YORK CITY-With a rally on the steps of City Hall, a broadcoalition of lawmakers, community groups and labor unions haslaunched the Living Wage NYC campaign, centering around a billintroduced to the City Council on Tuesday. The bill, which wouldset a wage floor of $10 per hour plus benefits for jobs generatedfrom development projects receiving at least $100,000 in subsidies,is likely to encounter substantial pushback, not least from MayorMichael Bloomberg.

"The issue here is there are a bunch of projects that don't workon their own, and the city thinks that they have merit, and so wesubsidize them," Bloomberg told reporters Monday. "Those are notprojects that could stand higher costs. If anything, they havelower costs. And I think if you had a bill like that, a lot of themjust would not go through."

Referring to last December’s City Council 45-1 vote to opposethe rezoning of KingsbridgeArmory in the Bronx due to the developer’s refusal toguarantee a living wage for workers at the 575,000-square-footmixed-use project, Bloomberg said that instead of having the jobsand stores that the project would have produced, "we have nothing.And that’s exactly what this bill would do. It’s a nice idea, butis poorly thought out and will not work."