New Yorkers are faced with a threatened strike by the Big Apple's transit workers in the midst of Christmas shoppings.

The strike, if it happens, would shut down the nation's largest subway and bus system at Friday morning's rush hour.

Negotiations on a new contract between the 34,000-member Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) are dragging on. The old contract expires Friday at 12:01 a.m.

The rhetoric has turned hot as the deadline draws closer. Though labor analysts say both sides are under great pressure to settle.

Just two days ago, New York State Supreme Court granted a preliminary injunction, prohibiting public bus and subway workers from striking if their demand for a new contract does not lead to any results later this week.

"A strike would be more than just illegal . . . it will threaten public safety and severely disrupt our economy," said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose lawyers were in court Wednesday demanding the imposition of fines against individual transit workers if they strike.

"An agreement will never ever, ever, ever be resolved by fear and intimidation," said the union's president, Roger Toussaint, a former subway cleaner and an immigrant from Trinidad.

A strike in the final shopping days before Christmas could cost the city's economy about $1 billion in the first four days; police overtime alone could top $10 million a day, city officials said.

The transit workers, pointing to a $1 billion MTA surplus, are asking for 8 percent wage increases in each of the next three years. The MTA has offered 3 percent per year and has demanded that workers pick up a greater portion of their health care costs.

The last transit strike was in 1980, and it paralyzed the city for eight days.