The fight over an effort to boost wages for Los Angeles tourism workers to coincide with the 2028 Olympics has taken a fresh twist, with the City Council president introducing a new motion that critics say would significantly water down the measure.
The issue ostensibly had been put to rest in September, when a business group-backed effort to repeal a $30 per hour minimum wage for Los Angeles hotel and airport workers failed to secure enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
But now, L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson has introduced a motion that, if approved, would phase the increase in over a longer period of time — delaying the full $30 hourly minimum wage until 2030.
Rhonda Mitchell, a spokesperson for Harris-Dawson, said the council president “continues to work with partners around negotiations,” but did not provide other details when asked for comment by The Times on Friday.
Hospitality and service employee unions sharply criticized the proposal.
“It is a shameful day in Los Angeles when our own elected leaders decide to put forth a motion to strip hard-earned wages from some of the city’s lowest-paid workers,” Yvonne Wheeler, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said in a statement Friday. “These workers fought for more than two years to improve their working conditions, only to have the very people who should defend them try to take it all away.”
But Rosanna Maietta — president and chief executive of the American Hotel and Lodging Assn., which had supported repealing the wage increase — said relief from higher labor costs is much-needed in an industry that has struggled to bounce back from pandemic shutdowns. The business group urges the council to “swiftly adopt” the new proposal, she said.
“Hotels are essential to the vitality of Los Angeles, supporting tens of thousands of jobs and generating critical tax revenue that funds essential services like schools, sanitation, and public safety,” Maietta said in a statement Friday. “This motion is a long-overdue step in the right direction and provides hotel owners and operators with short-term relief in the face of decreased travel demand and rising operational costs.”
The City Council originally voted in May to approve a series of yearly wage increases for hotel employees and workers at Los Angeles International Airport, following a two-year campaign by labor organizers.
The law was put on hold during the subsequent opposition ballot campaign, but recently went into effect, with workers seeing the first increments in a series of wage increases designed to boost their minimum pay to $30 per hour by 2028.
The new proposal put forth by Harris-Dawson would instead offer smaller annual wage increases, eventually boosting the workers’ wages to $30 two years later, in 2030.
Harris-Dawson backed the original proposal and helped ease it through a council vote. His spokesperson did not elaborate on why he now supports altering the timeline.
However, the motion comes after a coalition of airline and hotel businesses filed paperwork for a ballot measure to repeal the city’s business tax — a move that would strip about $740 million annually from the city’s general fund, which pays for police officers, firefighters and other services.
The business-backed referendum has been approved to circulate for signatures, and is backed by several airlines as well as the American Hotel and Lodging Assn.
David Huerta, president of SEIU-United Service Workers West, which represents airport workers, said the timing of the motion, in the middle of the holiday season, was “particularly callous.”
“We stand ready to defend the Olympic Wage,” he said in a statement.
The proposal now heads to two committees — one dealing with economic development, the other focused on tourism — for consideration.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
