OLD AND BUSTED: #FIGHTFOR15.
The New Hotness? L.A. Votes For $30 Wages At Hotels And LAX—$17 Next Door. The Fallout Has Already Started.
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They may not hire the worker at all. Outlawing jobs below a certain pay doesn’t guarantee higher-paid work; it guarantees unemployment for those priced out. If a person’s skills or experience don’t merit $30 in the market, this law has made it illegal for them to earn a wage at all.Consider an immigrant with limited English who might start in hotel housekeeping, dishwashing, or entry-level service jobs. At $15 – $20 an hour, an employer might take a chance and hire them, training them on the job. At $30 an hour, that same employer will likely demand a more experienced, highly productive worker for the role (if the role isn’t eliminated altogether). The rung at the bottom of the ladder gets sawed off.
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Employers substitute and automate. When labor gets costlier, it drives businesses to find ways to get by with less labor. That can mean investing in machines or tech or shifting work onto customers or remaining staff. Many chains curtailed daily housekeeping and never restored it fully (often spinning it as “green choice” to save water, while conveniently saving on payroll).Expect more automation at the airport and hotels: kiosks instead clerks, mobile ordering in airport eateries, robotic floor cleaners. Even trash collection can be automated; Pittsburgh deployed robotic vacuum sweepers. When labor costs skyrocket, technology that replaces that labor suddenly looks a lot more attractive.
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In effect, L.A. could make itself even more expensive, driving away the very tourism dollars it’s trying to redistribute.
Speaking of which: California sees drop in international tourism, report shows.
A newly released report shows that California has experienced a significant drop in international tourism.
Visit California, a nonprofit that promotes tourism to the Golden State, said international tourist visits from Canada, Mexico, the U.K., Germany, and Australia, among other countries, are down 15% to 26% this year.
In March, international tourism dropped 11% compared to the same month the previous year.
For four decades, Kervan Samuel has been a street musician at Fisherman’s Wharf.
“I’m seeing less, I’m seeing fewer tourists. You’re not seeing the real spending type of tourists that we had a couple months ago,” Samuel said.
Considering that for the last 15 years, leftists have been obsessed with “binge flying,” isn’t that for the best?