The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted to raise the minimum wage for more than 23,000 tourism workers, delivering a huge victory to unions whose members have struggled to cope with the rising cost of food, rent and other expenses.
On a 12-3 vote, council members instructed City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto will draft the legal text needed to raise those wages to a minimum of $30 an hour by July 2028, just as the city hosts the Summer Olympics and Paralympics.
During a meeting that lasted more than five hours, council members touted the economic benefits of higher tourism wages, saying it would incentivize workers to spend more money throughout the region and , therefore, would stimulate the creation of thousands of new jobs.
“When we support low-wage workers, they can contribute to our economy and strengthen the city,” said Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado, who took office Monday and represents part of the Eastside.
Councilman John Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley, voted against the proposal, warning his colleagues that they were about to “deal an ax blow to the local economy.” Council members Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez also voted no, saying they were concerned that hotels and other businesses would scale back operations, cut staff or turn to automation.
“I hope we’re not creating the highest-paid unemployed workforce in the country,” Rodriguez said.
The Olympic wage campaign was led by Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel and restaurant workers, and United Service Workers West, a local chapter of the Service Employees International Union whose members work at Los Angeles International Airport. The two organizations have held rallies, led marches and, this week, organized a three-day fast for tourism workers stationed outside City Hall.
Jovan Houston, an LAX customer service agent who participated in the fast, said he was “delighted” with the vote. Houston, 42, suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and believes the salary package would help reduce treatment costs.
“I’m happy they finally came to their senses,” she said.
Under the proposal, the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers would increase in increments of $2.50 per year, starting at $22.50 in July and increasing to $25 in July 2026, $27.50 in July 2027 and 30 dollars in July 2028.
In hotels, housekeepers, clerical workers and other employees would see a 48 percent increase over 3 1/2 years, compared to the $20.32 an hour currently set by the minimum wage law in city hotels. They would also receive a new hourly payment of $8.35 to cover health care.
These increases would apply to workers in hotels with at least 60 rooms.
Skycaps, cabin cleaners and many other workers at Los Angeles International Airport would see their minimum wages increase by nearly 56% by July 2028, compared to the hourly rate currently required by the wage order vitality of the city. The current minimum wage at LAX is $19.28 per hour.
These workers would also see their health care payments increase to $8.35 an hour, up from $5.95.
Throughout the meeting, hotel and airport workers described their struggle to pay for child care, housing and meals. Some fought back tears as they pleaded with council members to approve higher salaries.
Lorena Mendez, employed by LSG Sky Chefs, said housing costs climbed so quickly that she and her three daughters moved from Inglewood to Bakersfield. Mendez, 55, said she now spends several nights a week sleeping on her sister’s couch in Lennox or at her mother’s house in Hawthorne to avoid the more arduous commute.
“We are not living. We are surviving and it’s not fair,” she said.
Business leaders said the wage increases — coupled with new or increased payments for health care — would wreak havoc on the city’s hotels and LAX concessionaires. Some hotel owners said they were rethinking their participation in room block deals needed for the Olympics, while others said they were considering closing their restaurants.
Lightstone Group, owner of the 727-room Moxy + AC hotels near the city’s convention center, said the wage proposal could result in the closure of Level 8, a restaurant cluster on the hotel’s eighth floor.
Level 8 is already struggling to cover the $20.32 an hour required under the city’s hotel minimum wage law, Mitchell Hochberg, president of Lightstone, said in a letter dated 31 October addressed to the Chairman of the Board, Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
The city’s overall minimum wage is $17.28 per hour.
“We are already fighting this battle with a minimum wage $3 higher than our non-hotel peers and we are experiencing the repercussions,” Hochberg wrote. “It is simply impossible for us to remain competitive while absorbing higher operating costs. »
Mark Davis, president and CEO of Sun Hill Properties, said the wage proposal would “probably kill” his company’s plans to expand the Hilton Universal City hotel. Such a move, he said, would deprive the city of about 1,000 planned construction jobs and some 200 “permanent, well-paying jobs.”
David Roland-Holst, a Berkeley-based economist hired by the city to evaluate the proposal, largely dismissed these dire warnings.
Appearing before the council, he said he expects hotels to respond to rising labor costs by raising prices by 6% on average. Although some job losses will occur, the wage increases will ultimately serve as a “powerful tool for economic growth,” spurring the creation of 6,000 full-time jobs in Los Angeles by 2028, he said .
“We see no empirical evidence of mass layoffs in response to the minimum wage in California,” Roland-Holst said.
Even if the council had rejected the proposal, the minimum wage for LAX and hospitality workers would have continued to increase each year. These increases would have been linked to the consumer price index, according to the city’s political analysts.
The proposal is expected to increase wages for more than 40% of airport workers and more than 60% of hotel workers in Los Angeles, according to an analysis prepared for the city.
Economics professor Robert Baumann of the College of the Holy Cross, who studies the effects of the Olympics on cities, said Los Angeles hotel and airport workers are in a prime position to demand higher wages. With the city hosting an event as important as the Olympics, it currently has a “unique lever,” he said.
“The time has come to raise wages,” he said.
Los Angeles could still see labor market tightness as the 2028 Olympics approach, even with a higher minimum wage in tourism. Indeed, dozens of hotel employee contracts are set to expire in January 2028, about six months before the Games.
As part of their decision Wednesday, council members called for an annual assessment of higher wages in employment, hotel development and other aspects of the tourism industry. They also voted in favor of a report next year on alternative policy strategies for businesses that rent space in hotels, including restaurants, shops and spas.
Council members rejected a measure to reduce the number of hotels covered by the wage hike. And they backed away from efforts to limit the types of hospitality workers affected by wage increases.
Councilwoman Imelda Padilla, who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, voted in favor of the proposal. Still, she said she was disappointed that her colleagues weren’t interested in addressing some of the concerns about higher wages.
“I voted yes because for me it’s about workers, and for me it’s always been about workers,” she said. “But I always wanted to be able to say with pride that we made compromises and we paid attention to all stakeholders. Because we really didn’t.
