Nickle-and-Diming Mgrs.

Public perception also appears to have been a factor in Mayor Bloomberg's decision not to grant raises to the city's managerial corps. It's regrettable that a man who has sometimes shown an admirable willingness to take the heat for positions he knows are right on the merits has blinked on this one.

His spokesman cited the city's fiscal condition, but the cost of giving managers the 4-percent raises that have been negotiated for their subordinates is a fraction of what the city is ready to give the Yankees in additional aid for their luxurious new stadium.

Mr. Bloomberg frequently has spoken of managers being "his" front-line troops who make sure that his policies are effectively carried out. They are not likely to feel valued, however, when they are denied a pay raise for no other reason than that the tabloids might run a couple of bold headlines and editorials seeking to stoke public outrage.

The freeze will mean that the managers' salaries in some cases will be leapfrogged by non-managerial workers whom they supervise. Many of those employees already were earning more than their bosses because managers are ineligible for overtime pay.

What the city is saving with the pay freeze is unlikely to make up for the loss of morale and the difficulty it will have in getting line workers to move into the managerial corps once they see how they can be treated without a union to negotiate for them.