Even as the City Council unanimously rescinded a law Wednesday extending the so-called living wage ordinance to workers at Los Angeles International Airport-area hotels, council members ordered new legislation that would leave the door open to further expansions of the ordinance.
Both actions were part of a loosely worded two-page agreement negotiated late Tuesday with the mayor, council, labor leaders and two top officials of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.
The deal -- by preventing a business-led referendum on the living wage ordinance from going to the ballot -- was hailed at a morning news conference as a grand compromise that would spare the city a costly and divisive election battle.
But the exact details of the new legislation have yet to be drafted, much less negotiated. "This is a work in progress," said David Fleming, chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.
An examination of the eight-point agreement, as well as interviews with a dozen participants in the negotiations, suggests that Los Angeles' powerful labor movement has positioned itself to gain significantly when the new legislation is negotiated.
In the near term, labor gives up little. The new legislation, like the repealed law, would extend the living wage to all workers in the same dozen hotels near LAX. The increase would be phased in -- first a boost to $9.50 an hour on passage of the legislation, then a bump to $10.64 an hour July 1. Even if the original law had survived the referendum attempt, workers would not have received a raise until May at the earliest.
Councilman Greig Smith, a critic of the living wage extension, chided his colleagues for "the bait and switch of the decade" in rescinding one law while replacing it with something he saw as similar. "It gives us the same thing that you gave us with the first ordinance," he complained.
The new legislation would create an "airport hospitality enhancement zone" that would make the hotels eligible for a variety of public incentives for infrastructure, marketing and neighborhood beautification. By tying the living wage to a zone whose businesses receive public benefits, the city could put the provision on a firmer legal footing.
But it is the fine print of the agreement that could have its greatest effect on the economy of the city. In essence, the legislation would establish a new system for considering expansion of the living wage, with the council having to study the economic effect under an elaborate process that would involve at least two economists, one selected by the chamber of commerce and one by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
