Scoop: San Diego to consider $25 minimum wage for tourism workers

• "Significant wealth is being extracted from the city, and I don't believe there's a fair deal between those extracting the wealth and the residents and workers making it all run," Elo-Rivera said.

State of play: The City Council's new cost-of-living committee is scheduled to decide Thursday whether to pursue an ordinance that would raise the minimum wage to $25 per hour for hotel, event center and janitorial workers in the tourism sector.

Reality check: Per MIT's living wage calculator, a single adult with no children would need to make about $31 an hour to make ends meet in San Diego.

Between the lines: Wages among tourism workers exceed the city's existing $17.25 minimum wage, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, but are still short of the living wage.

• That's typical in a region where workers across the spectrum struggle to make ends meet, but Elo-Rivera said the tourism sector in San Diego offers a unique opportunity.
• "On one hand, we say this is one of the best places to visit, but we don't have the confidence to stand on that to benefit San Diegans," he said. "This is an awesome city that people will still want to visit."

Flashback: The City Council passed a general minimum wage increase in 2014 to $10.50, but business groups, led by the Chamber of Commerce, collected enough signatures to force it to the ballot in 2016, and voters overwhelmingly approved it.

• The city's powerful hotel industry, along with the business community that relies on it, could soon reboot that decade-old fight.

Context: Last year, Los Angeles passed a minimum wage hike for tourism workers to $30 by 2028, and voters in Long Beach raised hotel workers to a $29.50 minimum by 2030.

• San Diego labor unions held a downtown rally last year pushing for a $25 minimum wage like the one Elo-Rivera is proposing now.

• Voters increased hotel taxes in 2020 to expand the convention center and pay for road repairs and homeless services, but that initiative has been stalled in court ever since. City leaders are optimistic the case could resolve in their favor this year.

This isn't the first time this year Elo-Rivera has argued residents aren't reaping enough benefits from San Diego's place as a tourist draw.

• When the city increased parking rates last month, he said charging for beach parking could improve city services with money that disproportionately comes from visitors.

The bottom line: Elo-Rivera will now try to convince his colleagues and the public that the city can put the squeeze on large corporations that rely on San Diego's natural beauty for their profit margins.

• "San Diegans are subsidizing companies who don't pay workers enough to live here," he said.
• He said he hopes the ordinance will be written by his office, the city attorney and the city's independent budget analyst by June and, if approved by the full council, could take effect by the start of next year.