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City Attorney's Office Supports Living-Wage Plan for LAX
Hotel Workers
Daily Breeze - October 12, 2006
By Dan Laidman
With the crucial backing of the City Attorney's Office, a groundbreaking plan to impose living wage and worker retention requirements on hotels near Los Angeles International Airport advanced through a City Council panel Wednesday.
The laws are now headed to the full council, where stiff opposition from the business community is likely to produce a political showdown. In the meantime, the labor community scored an important interim victory as city lawyers said the proposals pass legal muster.
"This is an evolving area of the law; we expect in the next couple years for more and more cities to do this," said Assistant City Attorney Theresa Stamus. "It will get worked out in the courts, but at this point, based on what we've seen, we believe these ordinances will survive a legal challenge."
The city already requires its contractors to pay better than the state minimum wage, but the proposal would extend that requirement to the private sector for the first time. Officials have justified the move by arguing that the hotels along Century Boulevard profit from their proximity to the city-owned airport.
The city has been spurred on by activist groups led by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, which was instrumental in passing the earlier living wage law for municipal contractors. The group's new campaign coincides with labor efforts to organize the chain of enormous nonunion hotels between the San Diego (405) Freeway and LAX.
The alliance maintains that the average annual wage for hotel workers in the area is slightly more than $20,000. Activists have linked the situation at the Century hotels to widespread poverty in surrounding communities such as Lennox, Hawthorne and Inglewood, where many employees live.
Mike Pfeiffer, executive director of the Hotel Association of Los Angeles, said the group conducted a wage survey of its own, but he refused to release a copy. He told the council's Trade, Commerce and Tourism committee Wednesday that "hotel workers in the LAX area earn a very fair and competitive wage."
The proposal would set the minimum wage for hotel employees in the Century Corridor at $9.39 per hour with health benefits or $10.64 without. City lawyers pointed to two cases out of the Bay Area involving related ordinances that have thus far been received favorably in court.
Under the proposed law, it would also become more difficult for businesses to fire workers after hotels change ownership. A similar Los Angeles ordinance aimed at grocery workers is the subject of a legal challenge; related laws have survived challenges in New York and Washington.
City lawyers also advised that the council can enact a law requiring hotels to pass along to employees all gratuities that customers are automatically charged for. Workers have complained that their employers are taking large portions of such charges that customers believe to be tips.
Business groups from far beyond the Century Corridor came to the committee meeting to oppose the measures. Brendan Huffman of the Valley Industry & Commerce Association said the ordinances could lead to more such laws citywide that would discourage economic activity.
"The last thing we want to do is put Los Angeles at a competitive disadvantage in bringing tourism to the city," he said.
Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who chairs the committee, discounted such arguments, saying that hotel workers who are treated well "are responsible for increased tourism, and are responsible for people coming back to our hotels in Los Angeles."
Hahn led a group of suspended employees in an attempt to re-enter their hotel this past spring, while other council members took part in a mass labor rally that closed Century Boulevard last month. Meanwhile, Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents the LAX area, has been more reserved.
Rosendahl indicated he will support the new ordinances, but only if the city enhances the Century streetscape and takes other measures to appease business.
"I have not been at the demonstrations with my colleagues because I have been working behind the scenes with some of the hotel leadership," he said. "It's very important to me if you're going to go for a living wage on one side (that) you have to get the city involved on the other side to complement (it), so everybody wins.
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For over 20 years, Isabel “Segunda” Brentner has worked at the LAX Hilton, keeping her focus on her family and her job. “My priorities [were] to help my family,” says Brentner, who, along with raising her own children, cared for both her father and grandmother when they were ill. 
Enedina Alvarez, a 54-year-old single parent, says she must be both mother and father to her teenage children. Yet, with two jobs, she has barely enough money to house, feed and clothe them—and precious little time to spend with them. Although she receives health insurance through her job, she cannot afford to insure her children. Alvarez says, “I pray to God that my kids do not get sick because I cannot pay the medical bills.” 
Nearly all hotel housekeepers are women. The majority are women of color and immigrants.
