The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to hike the minimum wage for more than 23,000 tourism workers, handing a huge victory to labor unions whose members have struggled to keep up with the rising cost of food, rent and other expenses.
On a 12-3 vote, council members instructed City Atty. Hydee Feldstein-Soto to draft the legal language needed to push those wages to a minimum of $30 per hour by July 2028, just as the city hosts the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.
During a meeting that lasted more than five hours, council members touted the economic benefits of a higher tourism wage, saying it would prompt workers to spend more money across the region — and, as a result, spur the creation of thousands of new jobs.
“When we support low-wage workers, they can contribute to our economy and bolster the city,” said Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who took office on Monday and represents part of the Eastside.
Councilmember John Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley, voted against the proposal, warning his colleagues they were about to “take an ax to the local economy.” Councilmembers Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez also voted no, saying they fear hotels and other businesses will scale back operations, cutting employees or turning to automation.
“My hope is that we’re not creating the best paid unemployed workforce in the country,” Rodriguez said.
The campaign for the so-called Olympic wage had been spearheaded by Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel and restaurant workers, and United Service Workers West, a local of the Service Employees International Union whose members work at Los Angeles International Airport. Both organizations staged rallies, led marches and, this week, organized a three-day fast by tourism workers stationed outside City Hall.
Jovan Houston, an LAX customer service agent who took part in the fast, said she was “overjoyed” with the vote. Houston, 42, has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and believes the wage package would help ease costs of treatment.
“I’m glad they came to their senses, finally,” she said.
Under the proposal, the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers would go up in increments of $2.50 per year, starting at $22.50 in July and moving to $25 in July 2026, $27.50 in July 2027 and $30 in July 2028.
At hotels, housekeepers, desk clerks and other employees would see a 48% hike over 3½ years, compared with the $20.32 per hour currently set by the city’s hotel minimum wage law. They would also receive a new $8.35 per hour payment to cover healthcare.
Those 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 an increase to their minimum wage of nearly 56% by July 2028, compared with the hourly rate currently required by the city’s living wage ordinance. The current minimum wage at LAX is $19.28 per hour.
Those workers also would see their healthcare payment jump to $8.35 per hour, up from 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 the higher wages.
Lorena Mendez, who is employed by LSG Sky Chefs, said housing costs have climbed so rapidly that she and her three daughters moved from Inglewood to Bakersfield. Mendez, 55, said she now spends several nights each week sleeping on her sister’s couch in Lennox or at her mom’s home in Hawthorne to avoid the more punishing commute.
“We’re not living. We are surviving, and that’s not fair,” she said.
Business leaders said the wage increases — coupled with the new or increased healthcare payments — would wreak havoc on the city’s hotels and LAX concessionaires. Some hotel owners said they are rethinking their participation in room block agreements needed for the Olympic Games, while others said they are looking at closing their dining operations.
Lightstone Group, which owns 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 collection of restaurants on the hotel’s eighth floor.
Level 8 is already struggling to cover the $20.32 per hour required as part of the city’s hotel minimum wage law, said Mitchell Hochberg, president of Lightstone, in an Oct. 31 letter to Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
The city’s overall minimum wage is $17.28 per hour.
“We’re already fighting this battle with a minimum wage that is $3 above our non-hotel peers and are experiencing the repercussions,” Hochberg wrote. “It’s simply impossible for us to remain competitive while absorbing the higher operating costs.”
Mark Davis, president and chief executive of Sun Hill Properties, said the wage proposal would “likely kill” his company’s plans for expanding 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, good paying jobs.”
David Roland-Holst, a Berkeley-based economist hired by the city to assess the proposal, largely dismissed the dire warnings.
Appearing before the council, he said he expects that hotels will accommodate their increased labor costs by raising prices by an average of 6%. Although some job losses will occur, the wage hikes will ultimately serve as a “potent tool for economic growth,” spurring the creation of 6,000 full-time jobs in L.A. by 2028, he said.
“We don’t see any empirical evidence of massive layoffs in response to minimum wages anywhere in California,” Roland-Holst said.
Even if the council had rejected the proposal, the minimum wage for LAX and hotel workers would have continued to go up on an annual basis. Those increases would have been tied to the Consumer Price Index, according to city policy analysts.
The proposal is expected to increase the wages of more than 40% of airport workers and more than 60% of hotel workers in L.A., according to an analysis prepared for the city.
Economics professor Robert Baumann at College of the Holy Cross, who studies the effects of the Olympics on cities, said L.A.’s hotel and airport workers are in a prime position to demand higher wages. With the city hosting an event as prominent as the Olympics, they have “a unique amount of leverage right now,” he said.
“The time is ripe to go for a wage increase,” he said.
L.A. could still see labor tensions in the run-up to the 2028 Olympics, even with a higher tourism minimum wage in place. That’s because dozens of hotel employee contracts are scheduled to expire in January 2028, about half a year before the games.
As part of their decision on Wednesday, council members requested a yearly assessment of the higher wages on jobs, hotel development and other aspects of the tourism industry. They also voted to seek a report next year on alternate policy strategies for businesses that lease space at hotels, including restaurants, shops and spas.
Council members rejected a move to cut the number of hotels covered by the wage hike. And they turned back an effort to limit the types of hotel workers affected by the wage increases.
Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, voted in favor of the proposal. Nevertheless, she said she was disappointed that her colleagues weren’t interested in addressing some of the concerns about the higher wages.
“I voted yes because to me this is about the workers, and it was always about the workers for me,” she said. “But I always wanted to be able to proudly say we compromised, and that we paid attention to all stakeholders. Because we really didn’t.”
