Business Owners in Uproar over Los Angeles’s Proposed $30 Minimum Wage Hike

Excerpt from Inc.

Business owners who’ve spared a sympathetic thought for California fast food chains that have financed the state’s $20 minimum wage over the past year might want to turn that empathy to hotels in Los Angeles. Under a recently passed municipal ordinance, all larger hotels in the city must raise hourly wages by $2.50 each year until they reach the mandated $30 in 2028.

In recent weeks Los Angeles has mostly drawn attention to its large and energetic street protests against workplace sweeps by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) units, which are enforcing President Donald Trump’s mass deportation of undocumented people. Those clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement may look like tea parties compared to the hardening confrontation between unions backing L.A.’s $30 hotel minimum wage ordinance, and travel and tourism industry organizations vowing to overturn it.

At stake in that tussle is the health of the city’s struggling hospitality industry.

The dispute is centered on a city council decision in May to increase the current $22.50 minimum hourly wage at hotels with over 60 rooms by $2.50 annually, starting next month, and lifting it to $30 in 2028. The ordinance has since been signed into law by Mayor Karen Bass, also covers most L.A. airport workers. In response the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) trade group has gone into action in to derail it.

To do so, the AHLA is rushing to gather the required 93,000 signatures by the end of June to get its initiative to block the $30 minimum wage on the state’s 2026 ballot. Should it succeed, the coalition of airline, tourism, and hospitality businesses would freeze the increase until voters can have their say next year.

In response, the Unite Here labor movement behind the new hotel minimum wage ordinance upped the ante. It launched a petition drive of its own for a 2026 ballot proposal making $30 an hour the legal minimum for all jobs in L.A. Both sides have hurled accusations of underhandedness and making misleading statements as the signature deadline nears, with union members claiming they’d even been beaten while out canvassing support.

None of that increasingly bitter jousting is brightening the outlook of the city’s hotel owners, who have seen a tough business atmosphere grow even darker in the past month.

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