(Washington, D.C. June 11, 2015) - The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA), the sole national association representing all segments of the 1.8 million-employee lodging industry, today issued this statement as part of its joint lawsuit with the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) against the City of Los Angeles. This statement was issued by Katherine Lugar, president and CEO of AH&LA.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA) and the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) today appealed the district court's ruling denying our motion for a Preliminary Injunction to prevent the Los Angeles Hotel Workers Act from going into effect on July 1. We were compelled to take this step in order to protect our member hotels from suffering irreparable harm before the court has the opportunity to fully consider the legality of the Hotel Workers Act. We continue to believe the evidence will show that the Act improperly disrupts the balance of economic power between labor and management. This imbalance creates unprecedented bargaining leverage for labor, violating the National Labor Relations Act.

As we've underscored since we began this process, our opposition to the Hotel Workers Act is focused on how it purposefully ignores federal labor law, not the increased wages it provides. Union efforts, in recent weeks, to insert an opt-out provision for unionized workplaces into the citywide wage ordinance further demonstrate that labor is not focused on wages for its members, but rather is planning on using this opportunity as a weapon to pressure companies to unionize, as was recently editorialized by a leading national newspaper and reiterated by the Los Angeles press and business community. We support continued efforts by the City of Los Angeles to ensure a wage that treats all workers and businesses equally and fairly. Los Angeles hotel workers should be treated the same as the rest of the workforce.

Litigation Background

 The lawsuit is AH&LA and AAHOA v. City of Los Angeles.
 It was filed on December 16, 2014 in the federal United States District Court for the Central District of California.
The plaintiffs are the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA) on behalf of its 20,000 members, and The Asian American Hotel Owners Association on behalf of its 14,000 members. The Defendant is the City of Los Angeles.
The motion for preliminary injunction was filed on January 26, 2015.