A San Diego City Council committee on Thursday advanced a proposal to adopt a $25 per hour minimum wage for hotel workers, event center staff and janitors working in the city's tourism industry.
The measure was proposed by Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera at the inaugural meeting of his Select Committee on Addressing Cost of Living. It follows similar tourism sector wage increases in Long Beach and Los Angeles.
Elo-Rivera said many workers are struggling to get by while their employers rake in billions of dollars in profits.
"Decisions in this city for too long have been made to benefit out-of-town corporations, wealthy investors and a few powerful people while the people who make San Diego run, our workers, are left struggling just to survive," Elo-Rivera said. "That has to stop."
Hotel owners voiced strong opposition to the proposal. Robert Gleason, president and CEO of Evans Hotels and board chairman of the San Diego County Lodging Association, said the wage increase would lead to layoffs of hotel workers and reduced tax revenues for the city.
"Hotel occupancy is still below the pre-pandemic level from 2019, and occupancy is what drives employment," Gleason said. "San Diego is already having a hard time competing for price-sensitive conventions like Comic-Con that's only committed for two more years here in San Diego."
But unionized hotel workers and their allies told the committee the San Diego tourism industry cannot plead poverty.
"We have one of the most vibrant tourism markets in the country," said Brigette Browning, president of the hotel workers union UNITE HERE Local 30 and the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council. "This idea that this very rich industry — which, by the way, gets $50 million of tax subsidies every year for their marketing campaign — cannot afford a livable wage is ludicrous."
The committee, which also includes Councilmembers Marni von Wilpert and Henry Foster III, voted unanimously to direct Elo-Rivera's staff to draft an ordinance and bring it back to the committee at its meeting in June. Elo-Rivera said his staff would also work with the city's Office of the Independent Budget Analyst on an economic study.
Von Wilpert said she believes hotel workers deserve a higher wage, but that she was sensitive to concerns about how it would impact small businesses.
"I do think that absorbing a $25 minimum wage overnight would be very hard on a lot of these businesses, who we care a lot about," Von Wilpert said. "So I want to think about could there be a phased in approach? I think the business owners need to be at the table."
Elo-Rivera replied that he is open to dialogue with the hotel and tourism industry, but that he was unconvinced by their doomsday scenarios of layoffs and business closures.
"Just to be totally blunt, it's the same argument every time," Elo-Rivera said. "It doesn't matter what decade we're having the argument. Every time we talk about increasing wages for workers, making things fair for workers, they tell us the economy will break."
