Airport Experience® News - Conference Issue 2026

After a half-year of discussion, in May of 2025 the city of Los Angeles passed amendments governing its workers that provides significant minimum wage increases for airport and hotel workers, along with guaranteed payments related to health care. The minimum wage increased in September from $19 to $25.50 with additional $2.50 per hour increases annually through 2028, when it will reach $30. The change included an hourly health benefit for airport employees of at least $7.65 per hour, as well. Supporters of the increases say it’s a significant movement toward paying employees what they are worth. “The workers are the reason these companies are running,” says Maria Hernandez, a spokeswoman for Unite Here 11, the chapter covering LAX airport workers. “So, at the end of the day, what they’re asking for, it’s just enough to be able to live near where they work. It’s not to buy a yacht.” But detractors, who are still fighting to change the terms, say the increase is too much at a time when balance sheets are still struggling from debt taken on during the pandemic. They add that rising wages, unabated, will likely lead to layoffs and accelerate operators’ use of technological solutions such as mobile or QR-code ordering. “Over a three-year period, this current living wage is projected to be a 40% increase to our overall labor costs,” says Nick Crews, president, CEO and managing partner of Crews Enterprises. “It moves our labor costs up by 8 percentage points in the first year, from 39% to 47% and then every other year after that it moves it up by another point-and-a-half.”

Above: Los Angeles Airport workers fought more than three years for wage increases that will allow them to live near where they work, says Unite Here spokeswoman Maria Hernandez.

Impact On Companies Crews adds that with restaurant locations’ margins ranging between 3% and 10%, he’s going to have to make some moves to stay profitable that will likely include shrinking staff size and moving toward technological service options. He’s already gone to QR code ordering in some casual dining locations. “Unfortunately, the guest experience is going to suffer,” he adds. While small businesses typically feel the hit the hardest, he predicts increases of this significance will hit operators of all sizes. “Small, big, this is going to impact us all across the board,” he says. “Increases of this size, when traffic and tourism are down 13% to pre-pandemic levels, pushes businesses away from wanting to operate in Southern California or Los Angeles specifically. Unfortunately, it’s going to have the opposite effect that this council wants.” A consortium of business groups attempted to push the pay package to a referendum in 2026 but was denied when it didn’t reach the necessary level

of signatures. Crews says other avenues for slowing the wage increase are under exploration. In the meantime, Hernandez is celebrating a big win for workers while discounting concerns expressed by operators about future finances, saying with the Olympics and other high-profile events coming to Los Angeles, there is money to be made that will now be shared. “It’s not something that happened overnight,” Hernandez says. “A lot of workers in the hotel and airport areas did a lot of things. They talked to their council people. They did rallies. They did all they could over the last two-and-a-half years to get to this point.”

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AX NEWS MARCH 2026