LA City Council Approves Living Wage Ordinance: Business Withdraws Support
LA City Council Approves Living Wage Ordinance: Business Withdraws Support
LA City Council Approves Living Wage Ordinance: Business Withdraws Support
In a 9-3 vote today the L.A. City Council approved a new ordinance that expands the living wage to the thousands of workers employed at the LAX area hotels. The law will have to come back for a second vote on Feburary 20th, but it would only need eight votes and thus should be a mere formality before heading to the Mayor's desk for his signature.
Unsurprisingly, business has withdrawn their support for this new ordinance. There is no LAT article to link to yet, but this is behind the paywall of the LA Business Journal:
But living wage proponents and supporters on the Council, including Councilwoman Janice Hahn and Council President Eric Garcetti, accused the business community of reneging on their agreement to the compromise.
“It’s very disappointing to me about the absolute betrayal of the business community. We should not have rescinded the original ordinance. But in good faith, we did. They wanted to make sure we didn’t do this again without an agreed upon process. We did that. We gave them business incentives and tax rebates. It’s really an abomination that they then reneged on the deal,” an angry Hahn said.
Hahn and Garcetti also noted that the Council had earlier Tuesday voted to grant more than $60 million in city subsidies to the developers of the $2 billion Grand Avenue project, following a similar grant of about $50 million in subsidies last week to the developers of a major Chinatown project.
“That’s $110 million for business in two weeks. We can hardly be called anti-business after taking actions like that,” Garcetti said.
(emphasis mine)
As Maria Elena Durazo from the LA Labor Fed says:
The L.A. City Council should be applauded for doing what’s morally right for the workers employed by the hotels along Century Boulevard. Today, they acknowledge that these workers should not have to live in poverty to continue to make the hospitality industry profitable and successful. They acknowledge that Los Angeles should no longer be a city where within its boundaries resides the wealthiest and the poorest in the state. In 2004, nearly one in six Los Angeles residents had incomes below the poverty line, compared to less than 1 in eight in the rest of the state. Just a year prior, the share of Angelinos grossing more than a million doubled, outpacing the rest of the state.
Despite today’s support, I am disappointed that after countless hours of hard work to ensure that the needs of the business community were met in the language of the new living wage law that the Chamber of Commerce and Business would renege on their support.
Hear, hear. This is a good step forward, but it is disappointing to see the Chamber and other business interests withdraw their support, despite the generous subsidies they were granted.