By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

February 23 -- Amidst threats of lawsuits and ballot measures, upscale hotels and city council members are dueling over an historic living wage law that covers hotel workers.

Although the scenario may sound familiar, the battle is not being waged in Santa Monica, but in Los Angeles, which seems to be following the path of a groundbreaking brawl that began in the beachside city nearly a decade ago.

As if replaying a game of chess with slightly different moves, the Los Angeles City Council last week gave final approval to a living wage law that covers nearly a dozen hotels near LAX with no financial ties to the City.

The approval comes six years after a 5 to 1 City Council vote in May 2001 made Santa Monica the nation’s first municipality to approve a living wage law that covered businesses with no direct financial ties to the city. The ensuing fallout set the tone for local politics and brought a new force into election campaigns.

"For those of us who lived through the Santa Monica living wage, this may be deja vu all over again," said Council member Kevin McKeown, a vocal proponent of the living wage who survived a hotel-backed campaign to oust him in November.

Attorney Tom Larmore, who helped lead the opposition to Santa Monica’s unprecedented law, agrees that the battle changed the local political landscape.

“It certainly brought the hotels in, there’s no question,” Larmore said. “They really weren’t a player before. They certainly seem to be here to stay involved.”

Those who have been on the front lines in both battles agree that Santa Monica helped set the stage for Los Angeles by focusing national attention on the hot-button issue.

"If it weren't for Santa Monica, I don't think (so many) Los Angeles voters would have known about this issue," said Vivian Rothstein, deputy director for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LANE). "Santa Monica has played a real part in it."

A veteran of the battle waged by the local unions and the now largely dormant Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism (SMART), Rothstein sees many parallels between the living wage efforts in the two neighboring cities.

Larmore, however, cautions against drawing too many comparisons. The Santa Monica living wage law, he notes, set a higher wage level than the $10.64 an hour under the LA law approved Wednesday.

“The dollar amounts they’re talking about are substantially lower,” he said. “Under the Santa Monica ordinance (with inflation) they’d be up to about $15.”

In addition, Lasrmore argues that the City of Los Angeles played a bigger financial role in the success of LAX than Santa Monica did in the Third Street Promenade, whose success was used as an argument by proponents of the local law.

“In Santa Monica they forget that businesses paid for the Promenade” in the form of assessments, Larmore said. “I think it’s a very different situation.”

Originally approved last fall, the controversial Los Angeles law was rescinded after hotels led a drive to put the measure on last November’s ballot. Although the LA City Council contends that the new law is substantially different because it offers incentives, hotel officials disagree.

It is still unclear if LA’s scenario will follow the one played out in Santa Monica.

Six years ago, after the Santa Monica City Council passed an unprecedented living wage ordinance, hotels successfully organized a signature drive of their own to place the measure on the 2002 ballot.

Opponents of the council-approved living wage law mounted a successful petition drive and bankrolled an expensive campaign that was investigated by an independent panel after living wage proponents alleged some of the mailers were deceitful. The measure lost by a narrow margin.

"It's been quite similar," said Rothstein, referring to the tit-for-tat maneuvering between both cities and the hotels they are looking to regulate.

The history diverges with the Los Angeles City Council's decision to rescind the living wage law of 2006, tweak it, and pass it again after the November elections.

Larmore believes that the defeat of Santa Monica’s living wage law at the polls may have made the LA City Council think twice about placing a measure before voters.

“I think one reason the City avoided the referendum is they saw what happened here,” Larmore said.

The fate of the LA measure is still up in the air. After Wednesday’s vote, the affected hotels and businesses in Los Angeles could be poised to take the City to court, a legal threat Santa Monica Hotels made but didn’t need to carry out.

"I think there will probably be a lawsuit," said Rothstein.

Despite the defeat of Santa Monica’s measure -- which drew nationwide attention -- the local fight for a living wage ultimately helped improve conditions for scores of hotel workers, proponents said.

Facing the possible passage of JJ, several local hotels entered into collective bargaining agreements that boosted wages from an estimated average of $7.25 to more than $11 dollars in some cases, they said.

"While we were defeated legislatively, we felt we were really able to bring better conditions all around to workers at Santa Monica hotels," said Rothstein. "'More than half the hotels are unionized now."

"Just the attempt to improve conditions for working families made significant progress," said McKeown. "The pay and working conditions for the hotel employees were much improved by the attention focused on dignity for working families."

The living wage law ultimately approved by the council only covers City workers, but the union contracts at local hotels make it unlikely that the effort in Los Angeles could rekindle the living wage drive in Santa Monica, proponents said.

Still, the political fallout of the fight for a living wage has reverberated to this day.

The owners of Casa Del Mar and Shutters on the Beach -- two local hotels where workers have not unionized -- recently bankrolled an unsuccessful campaign to oust McKeown.

They also helped raise $100,000 for a $40 million parcel tax to upgrade local storm drains. The money bankrolled a last-minute campaign that likely helped win the two-thirds majority needed to pass the measure.

While the impact of Santa Monica’s living wage law is clear, how the measure passed last week shapes the battle in neighboring Los Angeles, as well as its political landscape, is yet to be seen…all over again.