L.A. delays – Los Angeles City Council approved an 18-month delay for a planned $30 minimum wage for hotel and airport workers after officials persuaded a group of business leaders to withdraw a Nov. 3 ballot measure targeting the city’s gross receipts tax. The wage will st
The negotiation had the feel of a standoff—until it didn’t.
On Tuesday. in a chamber filled with union workers wearing red. purple and yellow shirts. Los Angeles City Council voted 11 to 4 to delay a $30 minimum wage for hotel and airport workers. The delay pushes the wage increase back until after the 2028 Olympics, postponing the schedule that would have reached $30 by July 2028.
The vote landed on a compromise that city leaders said would prevent a business-backed measure from going forward—one that, if voters approved it, would have slashed revenue from the city’s general fund.
Under the new timeline, the minimum wage will rise to $25 in July. It will then continue in increments until it reaches $30 in January 2030.
The council’s decision was not unanimous. Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado, Nithya Raman and Hugo Soto-Martínez voted against the delay. The measure now heads to a second vote next week.
The stakes had been laid out sharply since May 2025, when the council approved a proposal to increase the minimum wage to $30 in July 2028 and also raised an hourly payment for healthcare coverage. That earlier plan also included changes that would have affected workers at airports and in hotels.
But a coalition of airline and hotel businesses gathered enough signatures to place a measure on the Nov. 3 ballot aimed at the city’s gross receipts tax. That tax applies to a wide range of businesses. including entertainment companies. child-care providers. law firms. accountants. healthcare businesses. nightclubs and many others.
City officials said the consequences would be severe. If approved by voters, the measure would have stripped $740 million from the city’s general fund over the first year. Over five years, city officials said, it would have amounted to an average loss of $860 million annually.
City officials. hotel and airport businesses and labor unions had been in continuous negotiations since last Wednesday. when the council narrowly approved an initial postponement of the wage increase to allow time to reach an agreement. The business coalition agreed to withdraw the measure if the council permanently approved the delay.
Tuesday’s vote did not only postpone the $30 wage.
The council also pushed back the hourly healthcare payment for different categories of workers. For airport workers, the hourly healthcare payment was moved to start at $8.15 an hour in July 2027. For hotel workers, the council pushed it back to July 1 of this year at $4.25 an hour.
The council further voted to set up a committee to study possible changes to the business tax structure.
At the meeting, Nella McOsker, president and chief executive of the downtown business group Central City Assn., argued that the negotiations lacked a basic partnership.
“Imposing wages and benefits without bringing business to the table is not reasonable,” McOsker said. “It is reasonable to ask us to partner together to be on the other side of the table and negotiate, but it is not OK to do so without that process.”
Union leaders, however, framed the deal differently—less as compromise, more as pressure.
Kurt Petersen, president of Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel workers, accused city officials of giving in to what he called coercion.
“They now have a playbook. The next time workers win something, they’ll threaten to blow up the city,” Petersen said of the business coalition. “It’s a bad day for workers.”
Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson described the end result as difficult but close to finished.
“I think we walked away from the negotiating table, like many negotiating tables, where no one was happy about the outcome, but everybody came away better than when we started off,” he said.
Mayor Karen Bass issued a statement shortly before the vote. saying she was brought in by both business and labor leaders to close the deal. She called the proposed repeal of the gross receipts tax “an existential threat to the city budget and the services it supports. ” including street repairs. public safety and efforts to clean the city.
“This agreement ensures workers are paid fairly and that businesses that create jobs can continue serving L.A. and hiring Angelenos,” Bass said.
On the other side of the room, frustration was loud and immediate.
Laura Esquivel, a janitor at Los Angeles International Airport, said she was frustrated council members were not standing by an earlier commitment.
“We’re sick and tired of being exploited,” Esquivel said. “Some members of the council that are here, now we know, do not stand with workers. We are not giving up, we will continue to fight and we’ll be back here in 2028.”
Soto-Martínez, a former Unite Here organizer, opposed the delay and said it was “sad and enraging.”
“I cannot support anything that is going to take away money from workers,” Soto-Martínez said before voting against the postponement.
Councilmember Imelda Padilla spoke in Spanish and criticized the way the negotiations played out. She voted for the delay while saying it still left workers at a disadvantage.
“If this thing about the gross tax receipts passes, we don’t have a city,” Padilla said. “The business community has us by our necks.”
She said workers deserved the wage increase, then argued for a better process next time.
“Next time, let’s negotiate, and let’s negotiate well,” Padilla said.
Taken together. the vote turned a wage fight into a budget fight—and the budget fight into a deal that postponed a promised timeline. By delaying the $30 minimum wage. city officials also moved to keep the gross receipts tax measure off the ballot. betting that the city’s next phase should be built on an agreement rather than an election.
The council chamber may have been filled with workers on Tuesday, but the work isn’t done. Because the 11 to 4 vote was not unanimous, the new pay schedule will return for a second vote next week.
Los Angeles City Council $30 minimum wage hotel workers airport workers gross receipts tax Unite Here Local 11 Karen Bass Marqueece Harris-Dawson Central City Assn. minimum wage delay