In a statement, city officials said Santa Monica will continue to follow a longstanding provision in its municipal code requiring local hotel worker wages to match those in Los Angeles. As a result, the minimum wage for hotel workers in Santa Monica will increase to $25 per hour on July 1.
Santa Monica officials have withdrawn a proposed ordinance that would have aligned the city’s hotel worker wage and health benefit requirements with a recently adopted Los Angeles labor measure, opting instead to increase the local hotel worker minimum wage while leaving existing benefit rules unchanged.
The announcement came Monday, one day before the City Council was scheduled to consider emergency amendments to the city’s Hotel Worker Living Wage Ordinance.
In a statement, city officials said Santa Monica will continue to follow a longstanding provision in its municipal code requiring local hotel worker wages to match those in Los Angeles. As a result, the minimum wage for hotel workers in Santa Monica will increase to $25 per hour on July 1 and continue rising alongside Los Angeles until reaching $30 per hour in 2030.
“The City is withdrawing a proposed set of amendments to its Hotel Worker Living Wage ordinance from formal Council consideration,” the city said in a statement. “In its place, the City will instead take a narrower step by interpreting our existing law as requiring that Santa Monica align its hotel worker wage with the City of Los Angeles.”
The decision marks a significant change from a proposal that had been scheduled for consideration at Tuesday night’s council meeting.
Under the withdrawn proposal, Santa Monica would have considered adopting portions of a Los Angeles ordinance approved May 26 that established a new hotel worker compensation structure. In addition to raising wages, the Los Angeles measure requires covered hotel employers to either provide a specified level of health care benefits or pay workers an additional hourly amount beginning at $4.25 per hour.
City staff had argued that Santa Monica’s existing ordinance, which links local hotel worker wages to Los Angeles rates, did not clearly address how the city’s wage requirements should interact with Los Angeles’ newly adopted health-benefit-or-pay system.
The proposal also would have raised questions about whether Santa Monica should adopt Los Angeles’ exemption for hotels with fewer than 60 rooms. Santa Monica currently applies its hotel worker wage ordinance to hotels regardless of size.
According to the city’s statement, a review conducted over the past several days concluded that Santa Monica could legally align its wage schedule with Los Angeles without adopting the separate health benefit provisions.
“Staff has determined that Santa Monica can align its wage schedule with Los Angeles, without adopting the new health benefit framework layered alongside it,” the statement said.
City officials said the broader amendments are no longer necessary because the wage increase can be implemented under the city’s existing ordinance.
The withdrawal comes after opposition emerged from a group calling itself Save Santa Monica Hotels, which had urged the council to postpone consideration of the ordinance. The group argued that the proposal was being rushed through without sufficient public outreach or economic analysis and warned that the added health care requirements could impose significant costs on hotel operators.
