Matt Klink is the founder and president of L.A.-based Klink Campaigns, Inc. Learn more at www.klinkcampaigns.com. Follow him on Substack at https://substack.com/@matthewklink.
Los Angeles is already one of the most expensive big cities in America. The city’s minimum wage recently increased again, and now sits at $17.87 an hour, well above the California floor of $16.90, as of Jan. 1. The region’s largest union for hospitality workers, Unite Here Local 11, wants to go much further, pushing a citywide minimum of $30 by 2028, just in time for the Summer Olympics.
On the surface, the union’s demand sounds fair. In Los Angeles, rent for a basic one-bedroom apartment averages around $2,000, roughly 25% higher than the national average. The union can gain political traction by telling stories of hotel housekeepers commuting hours from the only homes they can afford in much cheaper suburbs. The tactic seems to have worked, because the City Council has already approved a $30 “Olympic Wage” for airport and hotel workers by 2028, although City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson is now asking to delay that increase.
Paul Thornton
Progressive activists echo the same message. The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America backed the wage push for tourism and hotel workers as a matter of “economic justice, housing justice, and public safety.” These radicals proudly describe their “deepened relationships” with unions like Unite Here to build a left-labor political project in the city.
The problem with the proposed wage hike is that the math doesn’t just go away because the slogan fits on a sign.
A jump from roughly $18 to $30 represents a nearly 70% wage hike in just a few years. That cost has to land somewhere. For a neighborhood restaurant, a small hotel, a corner auto shop or a nonprofit operating inside city limits, only three levers exist to cope: swallow the cost, raise prices or cut workers and investment.
California’s fast-food restaurants have already watched this movie. In 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1228 into law, raising the state minimum wage for workers at large fast-food chains from $16 to $20 in one step. He touted the law as a “win-win-win” of higher pay and minimal side effects.
Jon Regardie
Researchers have found the reality has been messier. The industry-backed Employment Policies Institute used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate that California’s fast food industry has shed about 19,000 jobs, since the law was signed.
In a July working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Jeffrey Clemens, Jonathan Meer and Olivia Edwards reached a similar conclusion. The co-authors found that California fast-food employment fell by about 2.7% to 3.2% relative to the rest of the country after the $20 wage kicked in, translating to roughly 18,000 lost jobs. They note that this effect is several times larger than typically observed with smaller minimum wage hikes. Put another way: The higher the minimum wage hike, the greater the job loss.
Now, Unite Here wants to double down on the state’s destructive $20 experiment and establish a $30 wage floor for all industries in Los Angeles, including many with far thinner margins than national fast-food chains.
This massive wage hike isn’t a “targeted lift” for the poorest workers in one sector. It is a citywide price hike on entry-level labor in a place already struggling with high youth unemployment and small-business flight.
Meanwhile, the broader Los Angeles business climate is already strained. Hotel owners warn that the current $30 wage for tourism workers will lead to layoffs, canceled renovations and even business closures in a sector that has not yet fully recovered from the pandemic.
Mariel Garza
Layer a $30 citywide wage on top of the limited $30 wage hike, and proponents aren’t helping workers. They’re making it more likely that their jobs, hours and future raises vanish. They’re also asking every working-class family that buys a burger or a burrito, gets a tire changed, or takes kids out for a birthday meal to pay significantly higher prices so that they can declare victory.
Unite Here and its allies in the DSA seem to be intent on making Los Angeles a test case for a broader municipal socialist project, using local ordinances and ballot measures to ratchet up wages, increase regulations and limit executive pay while backing city candidates who support their agenda. Look no further than the four ballot measures that Unite Here Local 11 has filed in 2025 and the Los Angeles city clerk approved for signature circulation. If approved, one or all four of these measures will appear on a 2026 ballot.
There is nothing compassionate about a policy that makes it harder for a teenager in South L.A. to get her first job or pushes a family-run restaurant in Pacoima to close its doors. Los Angeles should be a place where residents can get a foot on the ladder. A citywide $30 minimum wage would kick that ladder out from under the very workers it claims to lift up.
