Name Game: Did Los Angeles Businesses Use Bait and Switch Tactics to Push a Petition?

At first glance, a petition that would force a public vote on Los Angeles’ recently enacted “Olympic wage” appears to be in decent shape. Needing about 93,000 valid signatures to qualify the referendum for next June’s election ballot, the group backing the referendum submitted more than 140,000 names.

But there’s a twist. The same letter in which the Los Angeles City Clerk’s office acknowledges the petition’s submission notes that it has also received “signature withdrawal requests” from more than 121,000 people, meaning they want their names stricken from the petition. The clerk’s office shared the document with Capital & Main in response to a request.

That leaves the fate of the referendum very much in question. It also marks the latest development in a yearslong escalation of hostilities between business interests who say rising wages in L.A. will ultimately cost jobs and halt economic progress, and the unions and their allies who pushed the Los Angeles City Council to pass the measure — and who expended tremendous effort encouraging Angelenos to reconsider their petition signatures.

“It is a good defensive technique,” said a veteran California Republican political consultant, who asked not to be identified because they’re not involved on either side. “In this case, [pro-wage groups] want to smother this early and not get to a ballot … and it means those opposing the initiative are well funded.”

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The Olympic wage is meant to raise the minimum pay for many hotel and airport workers to $22.50 an hour beginning this month, and continue scaling until it hits $30 an hour in 2028, when L.A. hosts the Games. The City Council passed the measure and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass signed it into law in late May.

That’s all on hold — for now. Until the petition process is settled by the clerk’s office, the measure cannot be implemented, and if the referendum is certified for the June 2026 ballot, the provisions of the Olympic wage will remain frozen pending that vote. But that likely hinges on the massive number of signature withdrawal requests.

The petition was circulated by the L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress, whose primary funders are United Airlines, Delta Airlines and the American Hotel and Lodging Association, the country’s largest hotel trade group. The AHLA’s members include Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott, all of which have multiple Los Angeles properties affected by the wage ordinance.

Leading the opposition is UNITE HERE Local 11, which over the past several years has battled hotels individually for higher worker wages and last year spearheaded a rolling strike of more than 60 Los Angeles-area hotels, eventually securing new contracts with substantial raises. The union is joined in opposing the referendum by SEIU-United Service Workers West and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. (Disclosure: UNITE HERE and SEIU are financial supporters of Capital & Main.)

Those groups have launched a series of complaints against the business coalition, including charges that petition-gatherers were signing up people by making them think they were actually helping to raise worker wages. They called on the Los Angeles city clerk to invalidate the petition altogether, which has not happened.

In a letter sent to State Attorney General Rob Bonta as well as the Los Angeles city attorney and county district attorney, lawyers for UNITE HERE further alleged “serious misconduct and probable violations of law” by those gathering signatures for the petition. They cited 13 instances in early June in which they claimed petition workers misled the public about the purpose of the petition, and eight instances of violence or threatened violence by petition circulators.

“This disturbing pattern of misconduct and deception herein threatens to undermine faith in our democratic process and puts members of the public in harm’s way,” the union attorneys wrote. They requested an investigation by state and local authorities. No such action has been announced.

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United Airlines and Hilton did not respond to requests for comment, while a spokesperson for Marriott said it “has not contributed any funds” to the petition-filing alliance. (None of the hotels did so directly; their hotel association fronted that money.)

Questions to both Delta Airlines and Hyatt prompted a response not from those companies, but from a spokesperson for Marathon Strategies, a New York-based firm that is consulting for the alliance. The spokesperson, Cydney Hargis, provided a statement that she said was from the alliance.

“UNITE HERE is once again peddling misinformation and falsehoods about a campaign that has inspired over 140,000 Angelenos to speak up about a potential ordinance that, if enacted, would disrupt a foundational pillar of the Los Angeles economy and lay off thousands of workers,” the statement said. “The petition’s language makes it crystal clear what voters were asked to sign.”

The pro-wage-hike groups, meanwhile, launched a campaign warning petition-signers that they might have been deceived, and explaining how they could ask that their signatures be invalidated. Even so, the Republican strategist said, it’s unusual for the clerk’s office to receive more than 121,000 such requests.

UNITE HERE also launched two petition drives of its own, one to eventually boost the minimum wage to $30 an hour for all workers in Los Angeles and the other to require voter approval for hotel and event center development projects that involve city subsidies — the union’s attempt to turn up the heat on the business groups that are pushing the wage referendum.

Based on data compiled by the nonpartisan online political encyclopedia Ballotpedia, the signature validity rate for petitions to place five propositions on California’s state ballot last year was 75.2%. Assuming results in Los Angeles hold at roughly that level, the alliance’s petition would have more than 100,000 valid signatures, surpassing the 93,000 threshold it needs to advance to a vote next June.

That suggests the fate of the petition probably hinges on the status of those signature withdrawal requests, which is currently unknown. At least in the short term, the wages of thousands of Angelenos rest in the balance.

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