LA’s minimum wage of $30 per hour plus $8.35 per hour toward healthcare is a runaway train

Efforts to stop an “economically disastrous” minimum wage requirement were cleared to advance, as growth was already being hindered.

Having learned no lessons from the devastating impact that followed raising the minimum wage for fast food and healthcare industry workers, Los Angeles mandated a hike of up to $30 per hour for hotel workers ahead of the 2028 Olympics. Last week, efforts to put a stop to the hospitality crippling requirement cleared a hurdle to potentially leave the matter up to voters.

According to a report from the Los Angeles Daily News, Interim City Clerk Petty Santos announced Wednesday that the referendum to overturn the wage hike had received enough signatures to be reviewed by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.

With a target of 93,000, the petition gathered more than 140,000 signatures that required verification for the city council to determine the next step, so long as a sample of more than 90% of the signatures is found to be valid.

Those options include a referral for further analysis, placing the referendum on the ballot in 2026 or repealing the ordinance that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) had signed on May 27 requiring hotels with more than 60 rooms to start paying at least $25 per hour in advance of the $30 requirement as well as $8.35 per hour toward healthcare beginning in July 2026.

“Hotel workers often live paycheck to paycheck and are frequently forced to work two or three jobs,” contended the measure that found considerable pushback as it risked further quashing tourism before the 2026 World Cup as well as the Olympics.

American Hotel & Lodging Association CEO Rosanna Maietta stated in an open letter penned in May, “The timing of the City Council’s proposal to raise the minimum wage for hotel and airport tourism workers to $30 per hour is economically disastrous. With two hotels already closing this year, more than 270 jobs lost, and hotels needing to renegotiate or scrap Olympic room block agreements, there is no doubt that the consequences of this proposal are already materializing.”

“These are not hypothetical threats; they are current realities, and they are crippling the travel and hospitality economy,” she went on. “The proposal’s economic toll will extend beyond the hospitality sector, affecting restaurants, event venues, and small businesses that depend on a healthy tourism ecosystem.”

Similarly, Concord Collective CEO Gregory Plummer, whose business operates locations for food at Los Angeles International Airport, had said in a statement, “The Olympic Wage ordinance threatens the very existence of small businesses like ours.”

“This isn’t just a challenge for employers — it’s a risk to the jobs of the very workers this ordinance is meant to help,” he added as the state’s current minimum wage was set at $16.50.

After receiving approval from the city for an expansion of the Hilton Universal City hotel earlier in the year, Sun Hill Properties CEO Mark Davis told the Commercial Observer in May that the plan had been nixed over the wage hike, and they were now looking outside of Los Angeles going forward.

“All our efforts to educate the council on the impact is real and valid, and there will be job loss in reduced hours and services — the only response any business has when the rules are changed to balance negative financial impact forced by the city passing bad ideas,” he said. “[The City Council] supports every idea presented by organized labor carte blanche … Our shareholders do not want to invest in a market with no end in sight for targeting businesses, with no checks and balances on this runaway train.”

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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