Posted on 05/24/2025 9:39:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics. The games were awarded to the city back in 2017 and since then it is preparing for the arrival of tens of thousands of visitors. They city was already struggling a bit because of the deadly wildfires which destroyed significant portions of two neighborhoods in January.
No one is suggesting that the Games be postponed or canceled in response to the fires. But there is rising concern that an already difficult endeavor for both Los Angeles, the main host city, and LA2028, the private committee in charge of raising most of the money and running the Games, has become staggeringly complicated.
Mike Bonin, a former City Council member who voted in support of the Olympics when the effort came before the Los Angeles governing body for approval in 2017, said the wildfires posed a “nightmare scenario.”
“It calls into question the city’s ability to deliver the Olympics,” he said in an interview. “This is cause for elected officials to ask themselves the question: Is this something we can handle?”
Now the city is facing a new challenge. The city council today approved a new minimum wage law that would apply to airports and hotels past a certain size.
The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval Friday to an ordinance that will increase the minimum wage for Los Angeles hotel and airport workers...
The vote authorized updates to the city's Living Wage and Hotel Workers Minimum Wage ordinances, which regulate the minimum wage for such workers. Hotel and airport employees would receive $22.50 an hour starting in July under the amendments, followed by an annual $2.50 increase over three years...
Workers are expected to earn $25 an hour beginning July 2026, $27.50 an hour in July 2027 and $30 an hour in July 2028, as well as receive a new $8.35 per hour healthcare payment, which will begin July 2026.
The new ordinance will now go to Mayor Bass for her signature. If she approves it, the sudden spike in labor costs presents a real problem for the hotels that were already struggling with a slow recovery from the pandemic.
“The proposed ordinance calls for a dramatic increase in hotel wages within 60 days of adoption. Increasing hourly wages to $24.40 with an additional $8.35 for health benefits would result in a 69% increase in payroll in just two months,” wrote the Hotel Association of Los Angeles in opposition. “No industry can afford that financial uptick in such a short period of time."
According to an April report from the American Hotel and Lodging Association, LA ranks last among major U.S. cities in post-COVID recovery, and with current visitor levels at just 79% of what they were in 2019.
And that brings us back to the 2028 Olympics. In a last ditch effort to warn the city against this, a group of hotels have threatened to pull out of an agreement to provide discounted rooms for the Olympics.
At least eight Los Angeles hotels are poised to withdraw from an agreement to provide discounted rooms for the 2028 Olympics if the city finalizes a plan to raise the minimum wage for tourism workers to $30 an hour.
The hotels have notified LA28, the Olympics organizing committee, of their decision to pull out of the Olympic room block agreement, according to the Hotel Association of Los Angeles. More hotels may follow if the City Council approves the Olympic Wage Ordinance in a final vote this Friday, May 23, and the mayor signs it into law.
The move threatens to complicate LA28’s lodging plans for Olympic officials, media and sponsors, who were expected to rely on the thousands of pre-negotiated hotel rooms across the city. Hoteliers say those rates were agreed to under very different labor cost assumptions and can no longer be sustained under the new wage mandate.
“We agreed to certain rates at the hotels at that time, and it’s not viable for us to be able to agree to charge the same rates that we calculated based upon a $17 minimum wage that’s now going to be almost double that,” said Mitchell Hochberg, president of real estate investment firm Lightstone Group, which operates the Moxy and AC hotels in downtown Los Angeles—one of the properties withdrawing from the agreement.
The city obviously can't expect hotels to stick to rates negotiated when labor costs were half of what they will now be by 2028. If Bass approves this, she's effectively asking the hotels to lose money on one of the biggest events in the city's recent history.
“It’s not losing money for one day, two days — it’s losing money essentially for an entire month,” Filla said. “The financial calculation on this has flipped upside down for a lot of hotels.”
Presumably other hotels are now doing the math and could decide to back out of the deal. Will this lead to new negotiations for higher room rates? That seems like the most likely outcome but you never really know what might happen in LA.
Wow! That is ridiculous! It is mostly for the illegals, isn’t it?
My belief is that this is how the government acquires control of industry, by imposing impossible conditions to function. Then they argue that the government needs to take it over because private enterprise has failed.
Now I feel old. In college I made $1.15 an hour minimum wage to maintain the shelves of the record department at an EJ Korvette’s store. Had two part time jobs and for a few months had a third one.
Minimum wage employee to boss: “I parked way out in the lot. Yesterday someone dinged the door of my new BMW when I parked in close. Just thought you ought to hear why I’m in a bad mood. I might take off early if it doesn’t improve.”
The price of stuff at airports probably can support high wages.
I’ll be staying at an AirBnB in Monterey Park starting in a few days. I decided against gambling on an unknown Priceline hotel in Koreatown.
Wow.... This will do wonders for tourism and business travel.
No way I’d go to Los Angeles, short of it being to collect my hundred million dollar lottery winnings.... in cash... And even then, I’d only spend one night!
I wonder if they will give you a discount if you bring your own sheets and towels.
I suspect the top hotels are already unionized and have expensive employees.
Many other hotels probably are owned by Asian Indians who will employ relatives.
If it works for the Olympics, what happens after the Olympics are over? Mass hotel closures? Stupid government action which will fail!
The people living in tents on sidewalks are going to have to move to make room for the athletes and tourists.
ONLY $38 per hour?!?!??
C’mon, Man!
Those are Chicken BLEEP wages! How about, at least, $75-$100 per hour?
Then, those people making those “sustainable” wages can quickly save up enough $$$ to get the frak out of Kalifornia.
However, even at the lowly $35/hour, many, if not most, workers are going to experience the true minimum wage - $0.00 per hour.
Happy to hear this.
The city doesn’t have to pay the increased wages, but they will get an increase in income off the 12% hotel tax they have. Or so they believe.
It’s like no one on the city council has ever heard of the demand/supply curve.
“… LA ranks last among major U.S. cities in post-COVID recovery, and with current visitor levels at just 79% of what they were in 2019.”
$80k per year but, $100k with overtime or tips?
What are they going to do with all the drug addled bums who strew trash and feces everywhere? Its gonna be mighty embarrassing for LA when Olympic visitors see what a zombie apocalypse that city has become.
If Bass signs this then the hotels will reclassify the employees so they do not qualify for the higher wages and or reduce the hours like what happened with obamacare to 29 or less hours instead of 40 hour full time. A business will not go out of business if they can help it.
The democrat party will not care as during the fake covid pandemic 40% of small business was shutdown for good by a few people like Barbara Ferrar who makes close to $600,000 from the taxpayers and her daughter who worked together was making $125,000 and arbitrarily decided who stayed open and who closed.
Who just happen to be unionized.
reparations!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.