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When the Los Angeles City Council approved updates to the Living Wage and Hotel Workers Minimum Wage ordinances, effectively increasing the minimum wage for its hotel and airport workers to $30 an hour by 2028, the move was met with cheers from the work community – and, predictably, with skepticism from hoteliers and related businesses.
The nickname for the update is “The Olympic wage.”
There was heavy lobbying from both sides. The Hotel Association of Los Angeles warned the local Olympic organizing committee that it might not be able to honor contracts to furnish rooms for the 2028 L.A. Games. It also said that higher wages being paid to employees would mean that businesses would fail to invest there.
There is no doubt that California has faced some big obstacles recently. Restaurant Business said that Los Angeles eateries have also been hit by the lingering impact of wildfires in January, and that a film industry slowdown following entertainment industry labor strikes has sent production elsewhere.
But according to Capital & Main, the push against the move fell down once council members studied not only the numbers but the stories behind them:
“According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, a single working adult in Los Angeles County with one child needs to earn $48.65 per hour just to cover basic living expenses. If two adults are working and have one child, each of those adults must earn nearly $27 an hour.
“We want to be paid enough to live where we work,” Brenda Mendoza told [the reporter covering the story]. Mendoza, a unionized worker at the JW Marriott L.A. Live hotel, is a Koreatown native; she and her family spent nearly a decade trying to afford life in the area before finally moving to San Bernardino County a couple of years ago. Mendoza, her husband and two sons make a nearly 200-mile round-trip commute daily to their jobs in Los Angeles.”
David Roland-Host, a local economist, told Council members in December that the wage hike would have beneficial repercussions across the area. “We don’t see any empirical evidence of massive layoffs in response to minimum wages anywhere in California,” he noted. In fact, he predicted those pay raises would act as “a tool for economic growth” and the ultimate creation of 6,000 full-time jobs by the Olympic year of 2028.
"This is what it looks like when working people come together and fight – we win. For too long, the workers who make this city run have been treated as disposable. This ordinance makes it clear if you work in this city, you deserve to live in this city — with dignity, health care and a living wage," Los Angeles City Council member Hugo Soto-Martínez told Newsweek.
The Olympic wage affects hotels with more than 60 rooms, as well as private companies at Los Angeles International Airport, including airlines and concessions.
Fox L.A. reported that the city will also establish a public housekeeping training requirement of no less than six hours for hotel workers, covering topics such as worker rights, employer responsibilities and identifying and responding to human trafficking or violent conduct.
The ordinance, now awaiting Mayor Karen Bass's signature, aims to be implemented in phases, starting with a $22.50/hour minimum wage on July 1, 2025. Other wage hikes will go into effect as follows:
The ordinance is designed to incrementally increase minimum wages for certain hotel (and other) workers by $2.50 per year until a $30/hour wage is achieved by July 2028, when the Olympics are set to begin:
- $25.00/hour effective July 1, 2026
- $27.50/hour effective July 1, 2027
- $30.00/hour effective July 1, 2028
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