A union that successfully pushed to secure the nation’s highest minimum wage for Los Angeles hotel and airport employees is now seeking to win the same $30-an-hour rate for all employees in the city.

Hospitality industry leaders are pushing back with their own effort to roll back or delay the existing increase, warning it will unleash an “economic tsunami” on their industry.

The new wage law, approved by Los Angeles city council last month, pushes the minimum wage for tourism-related employees to $22.50 an hour in July. It will rise $2.50 every July until it hits $30 an hour in 2028. 

Unite Here Local 11, which represents 32,000 hospitality industry employees, is unfazed by warnings that the unprecedented wage hike will force hotels to eliminate services, cut jobs, and put off expansion. It has now submitted paperwork to the Los Angeles city clerk seeking a ballot initiative to let voters weigh in on a citywide $30 minimum wage.

The union cites California Housing Partnership data finding that renters in Los Angeles County need to earn nearly three times the city’s existing minimum wage to afford the average apartment rent of $2,498 a month.

But the American Hotel & Lodging Association warns that the $30 wage will be devastating for the Los Angeles tourism industry, which already faces major financial woes. International travel is down 13.5 percent, Canadian visitation is down more than 70 percent, airlines have pulled more than 320,000 seats from LAX, and 11 LA hotels — totaling 3,000+ rooms — are in danger of falling behind on loans.

“City officials themselves have described the current economic environment as one of ‘unprecedented uncertainty’ and ‘full of red flags’,” the president & CEO of the AHLA, Rosanna Maietta, said in a letter to Mayor Karen Bass. The organization estimates the higher wage rate will cost 15,000 tourism jobs and says more than $342 million in new hotel developments could be dropped.

The new legislation was nicknamed the “Olympic Wage” law because the pay rate will reach $30 an hour just before the 2028 Olympic Games begin. But the industry warns that special room rates for the Olympics may need to be scrapped due to the higher wage costs.

The Los Angeles Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress — an umbrella group for hotels, airlines, and hospitality companies  — has launched a referendum effort to repeal the new wage law. If they collect nearly 93,000 signatures by the end of the month, the wage increases will be paused for a year and a referendum to scrap the wage ordinance will go before voters in June 2026.

Critics of the new law point to the impact of California’s $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast food employees. An analysis from the Employment Policies Institute found that California lost nearly 14,000 fast food jobs and 93 percent of restaurants had to raise prices in the first six months after the new wage went into effect in 2023.