A judge Friday delivered a stinging rebuke to Los Angeles' labor and political leadership, barring the city from enforcing a ballyhooed new ordinance that would have extended the city's "living wage" protections to workers at hotels near Los Angeles International Airport.
The eight-page order by Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe went far beyond merely blocking a law that had been considered a point of pride for the city's powerful labor interests. As a practical matter, Yaffe dealt a political defeat to the City Council, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the union that championed the law.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday May 09, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 33 words Type of Material: Correction
Minimum wage: An article in Saturday's Section A about a judge's ruling against the city's "living wage" ordinance stated that the state's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. It is $7.50 an hour.
During a yearlong political and legal battle, the council and mayor approved two different laws extending the living wage to hotel workers.
But in the process, they alienated the city's business community and, according to Yaffe's ruling, violated the constitutional rights of the public -- without improving the wages and benefits of the thousands of workers the ordinances were supposed to help.
Under the ordinance, workers would have been guaranteed wages and benefits equal to $10.64 an hour.
In blunt language, Yaffe accused the city's elected leaders of "bad faith" in the complex political machinations they used to adopt the ordinance in February.
Last fall, the City Council passed an ordinance extending the living wage to airport-area hotel workers. The legislation was groundbreaking because the living wage had previously applied only to workers at government contractors and other firms with a direct financial relationship with the city.
The move was in some ways symbolic. About half of the 3,500 workers at airport-area hotels already earn salaries greater than the living wage. Most of the rest earn the state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Hotel officials contend that when tips are included, nearly all of those workers reach the living wage standard.
Unite Here, a union that is attempting to organize workers at the hotels covered by the ordinance, lobbied heavily for the ordinance as leverage in its unionization effort.
But hotel owners and the business community gathered enough signatures to qualify a referendum so voters could decide whether to reverse that ordinance.
Instead of scheduling a referendum, the council rescinded the ordinance and, after talks with the business community, replaced it with a new living wage ordinance.
