Opinion: Garcetti’s reasons for living (wage)
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City Council President Eric Garcetti, over on his blog, celebrates the Council’s decision (criticized in two L.A. Times editorials) to mandate that hotels near the airport pay at least $9.39 an hour to their employees, provide ‘tip protection,’ and not fire anyone immediately after an ownership change. Excerpt:
The Century Corridor hotels thrive because of the massive public investment that is LAX -- no one pretends for an instant that they would be there or that they would have the high revenues per available room that they do if LAX were not there.
The problem with this logic? All it requires for another Living Wage imposition on targeted private industry is ‘massive public investment’ creating opportunities for geography-related profit. So, why not a Living Wage for workers at gas stations near freeway off-ramps? Or bus boys at seafood restaurants near the port? Or for anyone within city limits who works for a company based on the Internet (which was initially created under the auspices of the Defense Dept.)? Or for parking valets at lots near the (money-bleeding) Convention Center? Perhaps it’s better not to plant any new ideas....
Another Garcetti line is worth reading twice:
It’s also my hope that this is only the beginning of our investment in an area that it is an underdeveloped gateway to Los Angeles.
Unless I’m dense, the only ‘investment’ here is being made by the owners of the hotels affected. That is, if they don’t downsize their staffs, or move to locations outside the Corridor.