LA's $30 minimum wage boost for tourism workers moves forward after an effort to overturn it fails

A minimum wage boost for tourism workers in the city of Los Angeles is going into effect after the City Clerk announced Monday that a referendum to overturn it failed to gather enough valid signatures.

The news is the latest step in a saga that started when the L.A. City Council passed a $30 hourly pay increase for airport and hotel workers by 2028 earlier this year.

A group of business interests backed by Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and a hotel group launched a referendum in response to bring the issue to the voters. That campaign temporarily halted the wage increase from going into effect.

The group, the L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress, submitted more than 140,000 signatures. In response, the powerful hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11 launched an effort of its own encouraging voters to revoke their signatures.

The City Clerk found around 84,000 of referendum signatures to be sufficient, falling 9,000 short of the around 93,000 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot.

Around 40% of the signatures were found to be insufficient.

According to the City Clerk, around 17,000 signatures were thrown out because they were withdrawn by the signer.

" We are so grateful for the solidarity from Angelinos," said Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen, referencing the union's effort encouraging people to revoke their signatures. " Without that solidarity and support, this would not have happened."

The group has 30 days to challenge the signature certification, according to the City Clerk's Office.

“The business community will stand strong in fighting back," a spokesperson for the L.A. Alliance said in a statement.

The minimum wage for airport and most hotel workers in L.A. is now $22.50, and will continue to increase until reaching $30 an hour in 2028.

The referendum effort was beset with controversy. Both sides accused the other of using fraudulent tactics to gather referendum signatures and signature revocations.

Unite Here accused petition circulators of misrepresenting their effort to overturn the minimum wage ordinance and in some cases physically assaulting people observing their signature collection. The union asked the California attorney general and others to investigate in a June letter.

The L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress has accused opponents of the referendum of foul play, too.

In a letter to L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman last month, the group said the firm it hired to circulate the referendum petition identified multiple paid signature gatherers who were also collecting requests to withdraw signatures from the same voters.

It also accused an opponent of the referendum of physically assaulting someone circulating the referendum petition, and asked the district attorney to investigate.

"Any and all persons who engaged in fraudulent conduct must be held accountable," a spokesperson for the business group said in a statement.

The referendum showdown comes as business interests and the hotel workers are also waging battle through a series of proposed ballot initiatives.

Unite Here Local 11 has filed paperwork to ask L.A. voters to raise the minimum wage for all city workers, require that Angelenos vote on building new hotels and event center developments, and raise taxes on companies with CEO pay that far exceeds worker pay. Business interests have responded with their own ballot proposition to eliminate the city business tax.

Whether any of those ballot proposals make it to the ballot remains to be seen.