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Anaheim pay proposal would destroy jobs and take the city in the wrong direction

March 29, 2023

As a general rule, working conditions and pay rates in private companies ought to be determined in the open marketplace, through negotiations between companies and their workers – as well as their unions, when appropriate – and not at the ballot box.

We therefore oppose a proposal by a hotel-workers’ union to ask Anaheim voters to impose costly measures on the city’s hotel operators. The union claims it has gathered the requisite number of signatures to place such a measure on the 2024 ballot. Similar measures have had mixed results in other Orange County cities.

The measure would require that hoteliers pay hotel workers at least $25 an hour, which is $9.50 an hour above the state’s current minimum wage. It limits the amount of rooms that housekeepers could clean in a day – unless the hotels double that wage for the entire working period.

The city’s hotel and business groups have yet to publicly respond, but it’s easy to understand what such an aggressive minimum-wage proposal would do: reduce service, create layoffs and increase hotel room rates.

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The proposal also claims to protect hotel workers from harassment by mandating that hotels provide panic buttons monitored by security guards, but hotel owners already have security measures in place and the incentive to protect their housekeeping workers.

The union claims the wage hikes and security measures would boost Anaheim’s tourism industry, but we’d expect the reverse. This may be a tactic to pressure the City Council to pass higher wages that the union has been unable to secure through the negotiating process.

These measures are justified “because hotels and event centers receive benefits from city assets,” according to the initiative language. In 2018, Disneyland ultimately rejected city subsidies for a hotel as voters approved a measure that would have boosted the minimum wage for hotels that receive a tax rebate.

Anaheim’s subsidy culture created fertile ground for the recent corruption scandal, but that speaks to the need for less government meddling in the resort industry. Hotels shouldn’t receive subsidies, nor should voters or City Council determine wage rates.

Orange County Register

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Anaheim pay proposal would destroy jobs and take the city in the wrong direction

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