Want to kill off tourism? San Diego is looking for a way to get rid of those pesky visitors. One way is to make it too expensive to visit.
“Thousands of people working in San Diego’s tourism industry could get a big boost in their pay soon. A San Diego City Councilmember is proposing minimum wage to be raised to $25 dollars per hour for tourism workers. NBC7’s Kelvin Henry has more details.
San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera is calling for a substantial bump in pay for tourism workers.
Councilmember Elo-Rivera will propose a $25 minimum wage for hotel, event center and janitorial service workers at Thursday’s Select Committee on Addressing Cost of Living, according to the committee’s staff report.”
And every year the minimum wage would AUTOMATICALLY go up. We have seen lost jobs in the fast food industry due to this type of thinking. Fast food places have priced families out of a meal. Guess the government in San Diego is looking to have fewer hotels, restaurants and jobs—along with that, lowered revenues. Another example of government runamuck.
San Diego City Councilmember proposing $25 minimum wage for tourism workers
By Kelvin Henry, NBC San Diego, 2/23/25 https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/san-diego-city-councilmember-proposing-25-minimum-wage-for-tourism-workers/3761293/
Thousands of people working in San Diego’s tourism industry could get a big boost in their pay soon. A San Diego City Councilmember is proposing minimum wage to be raised to $25 dollars per hour for tourism workers. NBC7’s Kelvin Henry has more details.
San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera is calling for a substantial bump in pay for tourism workers.
Councilmember Elo-Rivera will propose a $25 minimum wage for hotel, event center and janitorial service workers at Thursday’s Select Committee on Addressing Cost of Living, according to the committee’s staff report.
The proposed ordinance will also increase that minimum wage each year based on the increase to cost of living measured by the Consumer Price Index or its successor index as established by the U.S. Department of Labor. It will also make sure it matches the federal or state minimum wage if wages of relevant occupations exceeds the city’s minimum wage.
“San Diego should work for the people who make it work. I’m committed to fighting to make sure that the people who fuel our economy can afford to live here. The hotel, event center, and janitorial workers who are the backbone of our multi-billion-dollar tourism industry are barely scraping by while out-of-town corporations’ profit off their labor,” Councilmember Elo-Rivera’s staff said in a statement to NBC 7.
If passed and implemented, around 8,000 local hotel industry workers would be affected by the pay hike, according to Bridgette Browning, the president of Unite Local 30.
“We keep the tourism industry going and the truth is our members are really struggling to pay their bills,” Browning said.
The economic impact to the local economy remains to be seen.
Local
“When the minimum wage is increased, there can be winners and losers. So, the workers who make the minimum wage are winners, they’re better off. As a result of that, they have more money to spend and that could give a boost then to the local economy. The losers are potentially then the businesses that employ those workers,” said Alan Smith, a professor of economics at University of San Diego.
If passed by the committee and the full San Diego City Council, the proposed ordinance would go into effect Jan. 1, 2026.
“the workers who make the minimum wage are winners…the losers are the businesses that employ those workers,” said Alan Smith, a professor of economics at University of San Diego.
Don’t pay money to send your kids to USD, if that’s the quality of economics instruction they get there. The “losers” are first and foremost the consumer, who must pay higher prices, and next the newly-unemployed workers whose jobs are automated because minimum wage laws have made human workers too expensive.
If hamburger flippers are worth $20 per hour starting salary, then tourism industry workers deserve a minimum wage of $35 per hour starting salary. Cleaning hotel rooms and the public areas of hotels as well as convention stadium restrooms and public areas is much harder work that flipping a burger as is maintaining city recreation areas and street cleaning.