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.
What’s the problem? Just convert all of the commercial hotel properties to non-for-taxing NGO’s who offer affordable housing to recent arrivals. The other buildings can be converted to soccer fields. The new democrats LOVE soccer.
Wow! I haven’t heard the name EJ Korvette in forever! My mother loved that store! Along with Woodward & Lothrop, Hechts and Montgomery Ward.
Insanity!
“ Wow! I haven’t heard the name EJ Korvette in forever! My mother loved that store! Along with Woodward & Lothrop, Hechts and Montgomery Ward..”
My first commercial employment at $1.03 per hour was in the housewares department at E.J. Korvette. Later worked there in sporting goods and then in credit, refunds, and gift wrap. Some woman brought in a pair of sunglasses for a refund. I asked her if they were broken when she bought them. She got a floor walker/manager who told me to give her a refund, as the customer is always right! Those were the days my friend…
It’s not the job of government to mandate any wage paid by a private business. Minimum wage laws need to be scrapped.
I think it is ridiculous; that kind of minimum wage & hosting the Olympics after that horrendous fire. Best just tell the Olympic committee to do it somewhere else or forget it, although I hate to say forget it on account of all those who have trained so hard for it.
Very apprehensive about the '84 Olympics - congested freeways etc.
Didn't happen. The locals stayed home! Most of our business during that time was from out-of-state visitors and participants in The Games.
Can only imagine what hotels will be charging with payrolls so high.
Do employers still need to complete an I9 for each employee?
They just significantly reduced the timeline where all of LA will be a complete homeless shelter.
Frank, mine was $1.00 per hour at night processing the days transactions at a savings and loan! After 4 years I got to 2.00! There was a 10% bonus at Christmas even for the part timers plus a great Christmas party. Chubby Checker the twist was the rage then.
Bookmark
What it is is the death nell for hotels in LA, oh people may have no choice to speak of during the Olympics but who travelling on a vacation can budget an extra 70% for lodging in shitsville LA? The democrats are insane, everything they do “for the working man” results in less jobs for “the working man” and businesses collapsing from increased wages and associated costs. These communists have never run a business and when things inevitably go to hell the can’t understand where the tax income has gone.
These are the days of the $400 and $500 MOTEL rooms for major events. Maybe LA is trying for $1000.
LA is a far cry from that city now.
The “unintended consequence” (what Democrat/Communists are famous for) of this $38 minimum wage is to finish the complete destruction of LA that the Fauci Flu fell short on.
I don’t see the problem here. LA voters wanted this and they are going to get it. If they don’t like it, they can go somewhere else.
They’ll bring LA with them.
EJ Korvette’s was named that because the guys that owned were Korean War Veterans.
Their record album prices were a little bit higher that Two Guys, so I spent my meager earnings there instead.
Two Guys from Harrison was named that because when they first started undercutting appliance prices, their competitors referred to them as “those two S.O.B.s from Harrison”
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.