Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday that squeegee men should go out and get jobs in restaurants instead of trying to wash car windshields.
"There are plenty of jobs available," he told an interviewer on WBAI radio. "A person who's a squeegee operator could work in a restaurant." He added, "Maybe the hours are a little longer and then you've got to pay taxes and there are a whole bunch of other things that are involved, but you really shouldn't fuel the impression that the people who are doing squeegees just really don't have a job."
Mr. Giuliani first raised the squeegee workers as an issue during his campaign for mayor, saying they menaced drivers and reduced the quality of life in the city. And since taking office, Mr. Giuliani's Police Commissioner, William J. Bratton, has made clear that he expects officers to deal not just with major crimes but panhandlers, squeegee workers and even truants.
An eight-week police department study of squeegee men, based on a survey of 41 of them, showed that police can easily drive them away from the entrances to bridges and tunnels through aggressive patrolling.
The study also concluded that the squeegee users "are of a population that is largely beset with alcohol and drug abuse, economic marginality and unemployment." Many, it said, "appear to be unemployable save some heroic efforts that go beyond any rehabilitation technologies." And for about half, "arrests for serious criminality" are a problem.
Mr. Giuliani, however, said he "knew of situations in which people have turned down jobs in restaurants because they felt they had more flexibility" with their squeegees. And he said his administration expects "more of people."
"Don't stand on a corner squeegeeing," he said. "Go to a restaurant. Get a job at a restaurant. There are plenty of restaurants in this city that will employ people at wage levels that make sense, that offer some degree of a career.
"I know people who own restaurants that started by washing dishes. I've washed dishes in restaurants. It's an honorable, decent, terrific thing to do, a lot of self-fulfillment that you're working 10, 12 hours a day and you kind of like working steadily and moving toward the possibility of moving up, becoming a waiter."
