L.A. Le Conseil municipal approuve hausse du salaire minimum pour les travailleurs de l'hôtel

Les grands hôtels à Los Angeles seront bientôt tenues de payer au moins $15.37 une heure pour leurs travailleurs - une des exigences minimum des salaires les plus élevés du pays.

Le Conseil municipal a voté 12 à 3 le mercredi à imposer un salaire plus élevé sur les grands hôtels, delivering a huge victory to a coalition that included organized labor, more than a dozen neighborhood councils and the ACLU of Southern California. Lawmakers cast their vote despite warnings from business advocates, who said the measure would trigger job losses at hotels stretching from Harbor Gateway to the San Fernando Valley.

Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education, predicted that other cities would follow L.A.’s lead, much as they did after passage of the city’s landmark 1997 “living wage” ordinance mandating higher pay for employees of many city contractors.

“Because of the size and prominence of the hotel industry here in Los Angeles, I do believe that this will have national reverberations,” dit-il.

Wednesday’s vote serves as a warmup for what is expected to be an intense debate over a more sweeping pay proposal from Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is seeking to gradually hike L.A.’s overall minimum wage to $13.25 per hour by 2017. Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and championed the hotel wage measure, said her group has no position yet on “the specifics” of Garcetti’s plan.

LA Times