REBNY execs applaud Murdoch unions swipe

Despite racy comments about a rumored New York Times buyer and a plug
for Boston Properties Chairman and CEO Mortimer Zuckerman for U.S. Senate,
Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman and CEO, got his best response
from the audience at a Real Estate Board of New York luncheon today
when he called for a push-back against New York’s powerful public
unions.

The audience of hundreds of real estate professionals in the Sheraton New York Hotel in Midtown broke into applause when Murdoch mentioned that the business community should challenge the powerful unions in Albany such as those representing teachers.

“Who owns and controls Albany? It is the state employees unions,” he said. “Until business raises more funds that won’t be turned around,” he said to applause.

Earlier in his remarks, Murdoch told the crowd that Zuckerman would be a good candidate for United States Senate.

Then he let fly a comment about Carlos Slim Helu, the billionaire investor who owns 7 percent of the New York Times stock, and is a lender to the owners of the former New York Times building at 229 West 43rd Street in Times Square.

Murdoch said did not believe the family that controls the Times, the Ochs-Sulzberger family, would sell, “least of all to a Mexican.” Although he later clarified that saying he did not mean it in a racial way.