Further distancing himself from President Bush, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday criticized the White House for suspending a law that requires employers to pay a certain level of wages to construction workers rebuilding in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.
Bloomberg’s latest anti-Bush move comes just days after he publicly opposed John Roberts, the president’s pick for chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, the Republican mayor, in a letter, urged Bush to reinstate the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the area’s “prevailing wage” be paid on federal projects.
“To rebuild and then five years from now to look back and say we did it in a shoddy manner when the next storm comes through, that would be a terrible . . . tragedy,” Bloomberg said yesterday as he stood side-by-side with members of the Building and Construction Trades Council in Manhattan.
A spokeswoman for Fernando Ferrer, Bloomberg’s Democratic rival in the upcoming mayoral election, had this to say:
“Freddy denounces taking away the basic protection of minimum wage from the poor and struggling people of Louisiana.”