Lawmakers in Los Angeles have passed a measure to increase the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 per hour ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics. However, that measure is getting pushback from the hospitality industry, which wants it in the hands of voters.
Wage increase
The ordinance passed in May would be among the highest minimum wages in the country and apply to workers at hotels with at least 60 rooms.
“The compensation and health benefit improvements contained in this Ordinance will directly and indirectly impact approximately 23,000 hotel workers,” the ordinance reads. “These workers are expected to increase their purchase of goods and services, thereby stimulating the economies of the City, County, and neighboring jurisdictions, in turn.”
The wage increase will take place gradually over the next three years, with the next raise scheduled for July 1, 2026, to $25 per hour.
Nearby Long Beach also raised the minimum wage for airport and convention center workers.
“Tourism workers across the region like me will be a crucial part in making the Olympic and Paralympic Games a reality in 2028,” Gloria Hernandez, member of UNITE HERE Local 11, said in a statement to Straight Arrow News. “Thanks to the Long Beach City Council for seeing that value and ensuring we are compensated fairly. We don’t want luxury. We want dignity. We want to be able to live in the city we serve with pride every day. That’s why this living wage increase means so much. It’s not just a number — it’s food on the table, it’s rent paid on time, it’s a little less anxiety at the end of the month.”
Officials expect an $18 billion economic impact from the Olympics. But the minimum wage increase doesn’t end with the Olympics. It will remain the law of the city after the games.
“A kind of a surcharge during the Olympics, just to kind of help workers get a bigger bit of this, this sort of jackpot that the city experiences during the Olympics, would not be a crazy idea,” David Neumark, professor of economics at UC Irvine, told Straight Arrow News. “But that’s not what’s happening. This is kind of a permanent increase that just seems to be happening. Then, $30 in my view is kind of crazy.”
Pushback to the increase
That view is shared by members of the hospitality industry who have gotten the implementation of the ordinance suspended.
“Despite repeated efforts, the city ignored the voices of small businesses who shared over and over again their continued struggles to survive in a post-pandemic economy,” Maria S. Salinas, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. “I am proud to join small businesses united in protecting jobs and the tourism economy that supports more than half a million jobs throughout the city.”
The LA Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress delivered a petition with more than 140,000 signatures from Angelenos calling for that increase to be on the ballot in 2026. That referendum has moved forward and is now being reviewed by the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for validity, leaving the ordinance suspended in the meantime.
“The minimum wage is effectively a tax on hiring low-skilled labor, and when you tax things in almost all cases, people use less of it, and that’s the fundamental problem that you can’t get away from,” Neumark said.
Minimum wage testing ground
Los Angeles and California have been a testing ground for minimum wage increases in recent years. An increase in minimum wage for fast food workers has been the center of a debate on how that increase impacted the number of jobs in the state.
That argument is the same one being made here.
“In some sense, what you’re saying is, we’d like a law that says your family shall not be poor or shall not be, you know, have income below some level that you can’t provide adequate resources to your kids,” Neumark said. “We instead pass a wage that says, ‘thou shalt not pay low wages,’ right?”
Neumark also explained that low-wage workers aren’t always coming from low-income families.
“They’re obviously related, but remarkably loosely related,” Neumark said. “A lot of low-wage workers are upper-middle-class teenagers, right?”
Nearly 40% of low-wage workers in California are under the age of 30, according to UC Berkeley.
“We’re kind of using the wrong policy for what might be the right goal,” Neumark said.
Neumark said solving the issue of lower wages in a state where the cost of living is high is a complicated issue.
“It requires redistribution, which means raising taxes, right? The minimum wage is disguised as not raising anybody’s taxes, so legislators don’t have to take the heat,” Neumark said. “They say, we’re doing a good thing, which is, ‘Hey, we’re going to raise your taxes and give more money to low-income families.’ You know, people scream even though, in a sense, the goal is the same. And the latter would be a more effective policy for getting money to low-income families.”
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Author: Cole Lauterbach
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