worker

She rides three buses from her Panorama City home to her job as a caregiver for an 83-year-old Sherman Oaks woman with dementia, and lately she’s been worrying about getting nabbed by federal agents.

When I asked what she’ll do if she gets deported, B., who’s 60 and asked me to withhold her name, paused to compose herself.

“I don’t want to cry,” she said, but losing her $19 hourly job would be devastating, because she sends money to the Philippines to support her family.

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

The world is getting grayer each day thanks to an epic demographic wave. In California, 22% of the state’s residents will be 65 and older by 2040, up by 14% from 2020.

“At a time where it seems fewer and fewer of us want to work in long-term care, the need has never been greater,” Harvard healthcare policy analyst David C. Grabowski told The Times’ Emily Alpert Reyes in January.

So how will millions of aging Americans be able to afford care for physical and cognitive decline, especially given President Trump’s big beautiful proposed cuts to Medicaid, which covers about two-thirds of nursing home residents? And who will take care of those who don’t have family members who can step up?

A building where multiple caregivers live in a cramped studio apartment in Panorama City.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

There are no good answers at the moment. Deporting care providers might make sense if there were a plan to make the jobs more attractive to homegrown replacements, but none of us would bet a day-old doughnut on that happening.

Nationally and in California, the vast majority of workers in care facilities and private settings are citizens. But employers were already having trouble recruiting and keeping staff to do jobs that are low-paying and difficult, and now Trump administration policies could further shrink the workforce.

Earlier this year, the administration ordered an end to programs offering temporary protected status and work authorization, and the latest goal in Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is to make 3,000 arrests daily.

“People are worried about the threat of deportation … but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work,” said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, director of the Pilipino Workers Center, who estimated that roughly half of her advocacy group’s members are undocumented.

In the past, she said, employers didn’t necessarily ask for work authorization documents, but that’s changing. And she fears that given the political climate, some employers will “feel like they have impunity to exploit workers,” many of whom are women from Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America.

That may already be happening.

“We’ve seen a lot of fear, and we’ve seen workers who no longer want to pursue their cases” when it comes to fighting wage theft, said Yvonne Medrano, an employment rights lawyer with Bet Tzedek, a legal services nonprofit.

A gathering at the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles in Historic Filipinotown. Aquilina Soriano Versoza, director of the center, says, “People are worried about the threat of deportation … but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work.”

(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)

Medrano said the workers are worried that pursuing justice in the courts will expose them to greater risk of getting booted out of the country. In one case, she said, a worker was owed a final paycheck for a discontinued job, but the employer made a veiled threat, warning that showing up to retrieve it could be costly.

Given the hostile environment, some workers are giving up and going home.

“We’ve seen an increase in workers self-deporting,” Medrano said.

Conditions for elder care workers were bleak enough before Trump took office. Two years ago, I met with documented and undocumented caregivers and although they’re in the healthcare business, some of them didn’t have health insurance for themselves.

I met with a cancer survivor and caregiver who was renting a converted garage without a kitchen. And I visited an apartment in Panorama City where Josephine Biclar, in her early 70s, was struggling with knee and shoulder injuries while still working as a caregiver.

Biclar was sharing a cramped studio with two other caregivers. They used room dividers to carve their space into sleeping quarters. When I checked with Biclar this week, she said four women now share the same space. All of them have legal status, but because of low wages and the high cost of housing, along with the burden of supporting families abroad, they can’t afford better living arrangements.

B. and another care provider share a single room, at a cost of $400 apiece, from a homeowner in Panorama City. B. said her commute takes more than an hour each way, and during her nine-hour shift, her duties for her 83-year-old client include cooking, feeding and bathing.

She’s only working three days a week at the moment and said additional jobs are hard to come by given her status and the immigration crackdown. She was upset that for the last two months, she couldn’t afford to send any money home.

“People are worried about the threat of deportation, but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work, said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Retired UCLA scholar Fernando Torres-Gil, who served as President Clinton’s assistant secretary on aging, said “fear and chaos” in the elder care industry are not likely to end during this presidential administration. And given budget constraints, California will be hard-pressed to do more for caregivers and those who need care.

But he thinks the growing crisis could eventually lead to an awakening.

“We’re going to see more and more older folks without long-term care,” Torres-Gil said. “Hopefully, Democrats and Republicans will get away from talking about open borders and talk about selective immigration” that serves the country’s economic and social needs.

The U.S. is not aging alone, Torres-Gil pointed out. The same demographic shifts and healthcare needs are hitting the rest of the world, and other countries may open their doors to workers the U.S. sends packing.

“As more baby boomers” join the ranks of those who need help, he said, “we might finally understand we need some kind of leadership.”

It’s hard not to be cynical these days, but I’d like to think he’s onto something.

Meanwhile, I’m following leads and working different angles on this topic. If you’re having trouble finding or paying for care, or if you’re on the front lines as a provider, I’m hoping you will drop me a line.

[email protected]

A coalition of airlines, hotels and concession companies at Los Angeles International Airport filed paperwork Thursday to force a citywide vote on a new ordinance hiking the minimum wage of hotel and airport workers to $30 per hour by 2028.

The group, known as the L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress, is hoping to persuade voters to repeal the ordinance. But first, the alliance would need to gather about 93,000 signatures within 30 days to qualify the measure for the ballot in an upcoming election.

Phil Singer, a spokesperson for the alliance, said the wage increase “threatens revenue Los Angeles urgently needs” — and its standing as the host of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“Small businesses will be forced to shut down, workers will lose their jobs, and the economic fallout will stretch across the city,” Singer said in an email. “We’re fighting for all of it: the city’s future, the jobs that sustain our communities, and the millions of guests the tourism industry proudly serves year after year.”

The new ballot measure campaign comes just two days after Mayor Karen Bass signed the minimum wage legislation into law.

The wage ordinance has been hotly opposed by an array of L.A. business organizations, which argue that it increases wages in the tourism industry too much and too quickly. However, it was welcomed by unions representing hotel and airport employees, which have supported many of the politicians who backed the measure.

The alliance’s campaign committee has received major funding from Delta Airlines, United Airlines and the American Hotel & Lodging Assn., Singer said. The group’s petition, submitted to the city clerk’s office, was signed by five businesspeople, including Greg Plummer, operator of an LAX concession company; Mark Beccaria, a partner with the Hotel Angeleno on L.A.’s Westside; and Alec Mesropian, advocacy manager with the organization known as BizFed.

The alliance is targeting a law that’s slated to push the hourly minimum wage to $22.50 on July 1 for housekeepers, parking attendants and hotel restaurant workers, as well as LAX skycaps, baggage handlers and concession employees. The wage would jump to $25 in 2026 and $27.50 in 2027.

The wage increase was spearheaded by Unite Here Local 11, the hotel and restaurant worker union, and by Service Employees International Union United Service Workers West, which represents private-sector airport workers.

Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, called the business group’s proposal “shameful” and promised his union’s members would go “toe to toe out on the streets” with the alliance’s signature gatherers.

“The hotel industry’s greed is limitless,” Petersen said. “They would rather spend millions getting them to sign this petition than pay their workers enough to live in Los Angeles. It’s shameful, but we’re confident that Angelenos will see through their deceptions and stand with workers.”

Under the city’s laws, hotel and airport workers have minimum wages that are higher than those who are employed by other industries.

The hotel minimum wage, approved by the council in 2014, is currently $20.32 per hour. The minimum wage for private-sector employees at LAX is $25.23 per hour, which includes a $5.95 hourly healthcare payment.

For nearly everyone else in L.A., the hourly minimum wage is $17.28, 78 cents higher than the state’s. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour.

Backers of the airport and hotel minimum wage hikes say they will help some of the region’s lowest paid workers cover the rising cost of rent and food, while also giving them more disposable income to spend locally, delivering a boost to the region’s economy.

Detractors say it will undermine efforts by L.A.’s tourism industry to recover from the decline in business that was sparked by the outbreak of COVID-19 five years ago. They contend the ordinance will lead to layoffs, while also chilling development of new hotels.

The ordinance also requires airport and hotel businesses to provide an hourly healthcare payment — on top of the minimum wage — that starts at $7.65 in July and is expected to go up each year. (Hotels will be exempted from that requirement until 2026.)

Once the healthcare requirement is included, some businesses will be required to pay their workers an additional 60% over a three-year period, opponents of the wage increase say.

THIS is the shocking moment a massive explosion shook a chemical plant in eastern China’s Shandong province.

Terrifying footage shows the moment of the eruption at the Gaomi Youdao Chemical plant in the city of Weifang at around midday local time.

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Images show the roaring inferno followed by billows of black smoke rising high into the sky.

Emergency Services sent more than 230 firefighters and 55 vehicles to the scene to try and bring the blaze caused by the explosion under control.

The explosion killed at least five people while 19 are reportedly injured, according to local emergency management authorities.

A further six people are currently missing.

A local resident told the The Associated Press news agency that his home – located than 7km (4.3 miles) from the plant – shook from the impact of the explosion.

The plant manufactures pesticides as well as chemicals for medical use, and has more than 500 employees, according to corporate registration records.

Local fire officials sent more than 230 personnel to the scene, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.

Workplace safety has improved over the years in China but remains a stubborn problem.

The National Ministry of Emergency Management recorded 21,800 incidents and 19,600 deaths in 2024.

A recent spate of such accidents has prompted calls from President Xi Jinping for “deep reflection” and greater efforts to stop them.

Last month, at least 15 people were killed and 44 injured in a fire at a residential building in the eastern city of Nanjing.

In January, dozens died after a fire broke out at a store in the central city of Xinyu, with state news agency Xinhua reporting the blaze had been caused by the “illegal” use of fire by workers in the store’s basement.

That fire came just days after a late-evening blaze at a school in central Henan province killed 13 schoolchildren as they slept in a dormitory.

Domestic media reports suggested the fire was caused by an electric heating device.

Meanwhile, a deadly explosion ripped through a fried chicken shop in northern China, killing two people and injuring 26 more last year.

Shops, homes, and cars were completely destroyed in the horror blast, which is believed to have been caused by a gas leak, according to state reported at the time.

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May 20 (UPI) — A maintenance worker was arrested for aiding in the escape of nearly a dozen inmates from a jail in New Orleans.

Sterling Willings, 33, was arrested Monday night for allegedly facilitating the escape of 10 inmates housed at Orleans Parish Justice Center in Louisiana and was booked “without incident” into a Plaquemines Parish jail Tuesday morning, according to ABC, CBS and NOLA.

According to state Attorney General Liz Murrill, Williams told agents that one of the escapees advised him to turn the water off in the cell where the inmates escaped from.

“This is a continuing investigation, and we will provide updates as often as possible,” Murrill said Tuesday in a statement.

Throughout the investigation, three other jail employees were suspended as the search for the remaining six inmates — Antoine Massey, Lenton Vanburen, Jermaine Donald, Leo Tate, Derrick Groves and Corey Boyd — carries on.

“We will uncover all the facts eventually and anyone who aided and abetted will be prosecuted to the full extent the law allows,” added Murrill.

Three of the escapees — Robert Moody, Dkenan Dennis and Kendall Myles — were apprehended within 24 hours and a fourth was arrested Monday, 21-year-old Gary C. Price.

On Friday, the 10 men escaped via a wall behind a toilet at around 1:00 a.m. CDT. Meanwhile, the escape wasn’t discovered until a routine headcount at 8:30 a.m., hours after the successful break.

More than 200 officers with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies were participating in the manhunt after the 10 men escaped Friday morning from Orleans Parish with authorities alerted in Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

Williams allegedly shut off the toilet water so the crew could make their exit after ripping the toilet off its foundation.

They breached a wall behind it, used a loading dock door to exit the jail and scaled fences with blankets to protect themselves from getting cut by barbed wire, according to officials. Finally, they crossed Interstate 10 and dispersed into a nearby neighborhood and took off their inmate clothes.

Sheriff Susan Hutson speculated the jailbreak could be an inside job.

“Even Stevie Wonder can see that this was an inside job,” Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams told ABC Tuesday morning, whose office is investigating the breakout.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, meanwhile, has ordered a comprehensive jail audit.

“Ten violent offenders don’t make their way into a pod made for two and make good their escape through concrete, rebar and barbed wire, without there being some sort of inside assistance,” Williams added.

The district attorney speculated that “greed, avarice, friendship, the motives that cause men to do bad things” could be among reasons why a jail employee would risk their job to help a prisoner escape.

Williams, the prison worker, is now facing at least 10 counts of simple to principle escape and one charge of office malfeasance.

SEOUL — In South Korea, the Trump administration’s 25% tariff on imported cars has sent local automakers Hyundai and Kia scrambling to protect one of the country’s most valuable exports. But General Motors, which last year shipped 418,782 units from its factories here to American consumers — or 88.5% of its total sales — may be facing a much larger predicament.

Unlike Hyundai and Kia, which control over 90% of the domestic market here, the Detroit-based automaker produces budget SUVs like the Chevrolet Trax or Chevrolet Trailblazer almost exclusively for the U.S. market. The Trax has been South Korea’s most-exported car since 2023.

That business model has made GM, which operates three factories and employs some 11,000 workers in the country, uniquely exposed to Trump’s auto tariffs, resurfacing long-running concerns in the local automobile industry that the company may ultimately pack up and leave.

Until last month’s tariffs, cars sold between the U.S. and South Korea were untaxed under a bilateral free trade agreement. That helped South Korea become the third-largest automobile exporter to the U.S. last year to the tune of $34.7 billion — or around half of its total automobile exports. In contrast, South Korea bought just $2.1 billion worth of cars from the U.S.

Earlier this month, GM executives estimated that the tariffs would cost the company up to $5 billion this year, adding that the company would boost production in its U.S. plants to offset the hit. With additional factories in Mexico and Canada, GM currently imports around half of the cars that it sells in the U.S.

“If the U.S. tariffs remain in place, GM will no longer have any reason to stay in South Korea,” said Lee Ho-guen, an automotive engineering professor at Daeduk University.

“The tariffs may add up to $10,000 to the sticker price on cars shipped to the U.S., while GM sells less than 50,000 units a year in South Korea. There is very little room for them to adjust their strategy.”

Kim Woong-heon, an official in GM Korea’s labor union, said that the union is approaching current rumors of the company’s potential exit with a dose of caution, but added that broader concerns about the company’s long-term commitment remain.

“The cars we’re manufacturing here are on the lowest end of GM’s price range so labor costs will make it impossible to immediately shift production to the U.S.,” he said.

“But we have painful memories of GM shutting down one of its factories in 2018, so we get nervous every time these rumors surface.”

GM Chevrolet automobiles bound for export sit parked at the Port of Incheon in South Korea.

(SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

This isn’t the first time that GM’s prospects in the country have come under question. The company first established itself in South Korea in 2002 by acquiring the bankrupt Daewoo Motor Co. in a government-backed deal that some at the time criticized as “GM taking the cream off Daewoo for almost nothing.”

Struggling to compete with the likes of Hyundai, GM briefly positioned itself as a production base for European and Asian markets until its bankruptcy in 2009.

Amid the global restructuring efforts that followed, concerns that it would close its South Korean operations led the government to once again intervene. In the end, GM stayed after receiving $750 million in financing from the country’s development bank on the condition that it would remain open for at least 10 more years.

But in 2018, the company closed its factory in the city of Gunsan, which had employed around 1,800 workers, and spun off its research and development unit from its manufacturing base — a move that many saw as the company strategically placing one foot out the door.

In February, shortly after President Trump announced the 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars, Paul Jacobson, GM’s chief financial officer, hinted that the company may once again be facing similarly tough decisions:

“If they become permanent, then there’s a whole bunch of different things that you have to think about in terms of, where do you allocate plants, and do you move plants.”

In recent weeks, executives from GM Korea have sought to assuage the rumors that the company’s South Korean operations would be affected.

“We do not intend to respond to rumors about the company’s exit from Korea,” said Gustavo Colossi, GM Korea’s vice president of sales, at a news conference last month. “We plan to move forward with our sales strategies in Korea and continue launching new models in the coming weeks and months, introducing fresh GM offerings to the market.”

The union says the company’s two finished car plants have been running at full capacity, with an additional 21,000 units recently allocated to the factory in Incheon, a city off the country’s western coast — a sign that business will go on as usual for now.

But with GM’s 10-year guarantee set to expire in 2027, Kim, the union official, said that their demands for measures that prove the company’s commitment beyond that have gone unanswered.

These include manufacturing GM’s electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in South Korean factories, as well as making a greater range of its products available for sale in South Korea and other Asian markets.

”If the company intends to continue its operations here, it needs to make its business model more sustainable and not as reliant on imports to the U.S.,” Kim said.

“That will be our core demand at this year’s wage and collective bargaining negotiations.”

GM’s immediate prospects in the country will depend on the ongoing tariff talks between U.S. and South Korean officials that began last month with the goal of producing a deal by July 8.

Although South Korean trade minister Ahn Duk-geun has stressed that cars are “the most important part of the U.S.-South Korea trade relationship,” few expect that Seoul will be able to finesse the sort of deal given to the U.K., which last week secured a 10% rate on the first 100,000 vehicles shipped to the U.S. each year.

Unlike South Korea, which posted a $66-billion trade surplus with the U.S. last year, the U.K. buys more from the U.S. than it sells. And many of the cars that it does sell to the U.S. are luxury vehicles such as the Rolls-Royce, which Trump has differentiated from the “monster car companies” that make “millions of cars.”

“At some point after the next two years, I believe it’s highly likely GM will leave and keep only their research and development unit here, or at least significantly cut back on their production,” Lee, the automotive professor, said.

In the southeastern port city of Changwon, home to the smaller of GM’s two finished car plants, local officials have been reluctant to give air to what they describe as premature fearmongering.

But Woo Choon-ae, a 62-year-old real estate agent whose clients also include GM workers and their families, can’t help but worry.

She says that the company’s exit would be devastating to the city, which, like many rural areas, has already been under strain from population decline.

GM employs 2,800 workers in the region, but accounts for thousands more jobs at its suppliers. The Changwon factory, which manufactures the Trax, represented around 15% of the city’s total exports last year.

“People work for GM because it offers stable employment until retirement age. If they close the factory here, all of these workers will leave to find work in other cities, which will be a critical blow to the housing market,” she said.

“Homes are how people save money in South Korea. But if people’s savings are suddenly halved, who’s going to be spending money on things like dining out?”

If you voted for Donald Trump last November because you believed he’d increase economic freedom, it’s safe to say you were fooled. Following a reckless tariff barrage, the White House and its allies are preparing a new wave of tax-code gimmickry that has more in common with progressive social engineering than pro-growth reform. And don’t forget a fiscal recklessness that mirrors the mistakes of the left.

Defend these policies if you like, but let’s be clear: The administration shows no coherent commitment to free-market principles and is in fact actively undermining them. Its approach is better described as central planning disguised as economic nationalism.

This week’s example is an executive-order attempt at prescription-drug price control, similar to Democrats’ past proposals. If implemented it would inevitably reduce pharmaceutical R&D and innovation.

Tariffs remain the administration’s most visible economic sin after Trump launched the most extreme escalation of protectionism since the infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930. Unlike the 1930s, however, today’s economy is deeply integrated with global supply chains, making the damage extensive and far more immediate. Tariffs are only nominally imposed on imports. Ultimately, they’re taxes on American consumers, workers and businesses.

The president has made it clear that he’s fine with limiting consumer choice, blithely telling parents they might have to “settle” for two dolls instead of 30 for their children. Smug pronouncements about how much we should shop (not much) or which sectors we should work in (manufacturing) are economic authoritarianism.

They’re also indicative of a deeper government rot. Policymaking is now done by executive orders as comatose congressional Republicans, like some Biden-era Democrats, allow the president to rule as if he’s a monarch.

A full-throated, assertive Congress would remind any president that manufacturing jobs were mostly lost to technologies that also create jobs and opportunity in members’ districts. Prosperity increases only through innovation and competition and isn’t restored by dragging people backward into lower-productivity jobs.

Now, even Trump’s tax agenda — once considered a bright spot by many free-market advocates — is being corrupted. Instead of championing the broad-based, pro-growth reforms we’d hoped for, the administration is doubling down on gimmickry: exempting tips and overtime pay, expanding child tax credits and entertaining the idea of raising top marginal tax rates.

These moves might poll well, but they’re unprincipled and unproductive. They undermine the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which aimed (however imperfectly) to simplify the code and incentivize growth, and not to micromanage worker and household behavior through the Internal Revenue Service.

And then there are the administration’s misleading, populist talking points about raising taxes on the rich to reduce taxes on lower- and middle-income workers. The U.S. income-tax system is already one of the most progressive in the developed world. According to the latest IRS data, the top 1% of earners pay more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90% combined. These high earners provide 40% of federal income-tax revenue; the bottom half of earners make up only 3% of that revenue. Thankfully, the House of Representatives steered away from that mistake in its bill.

Meanwhile, some Republican legislators are pushing to extend the 2017 tax cuts without meaningful offsets, setting the stage for a debt-fueled disaster. As noted by Scott Hodge, formerly the longtime president of the Tax Foundation, the GOP’s proposed cuts could add more than $5.8 trillion to the debt over a decade. That’s nearly three times the cost of the 2021 American Rescue Plan, which many Republicans rightly criticized for fueling inflation and fiscal instability.

To be clear: Pro-growth tax reform is essential. But not every tax cut is pro-growth, and no tax cut justifies further fiscal deterioration. Extending the 2017 cuts, which I generally support, shouldn’t be confused with true tax reform.

Some of the provisions being floated — expanded credits, exclusions for tips and overtime, rolling back the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap — are not growth policies. They are wealth redistribution run through the tax code, indistinguishable in substance from the kind of demand-side, Keynesian stimulus Republicans once decried.

Hodge notes that these measures would do more to mimic the American Rescue Plan than to reverse its pricey mistakes. And with the Federal Reserve still fighting inflation, adding trillions in unfunded liabilities to the national ledger is profoundly irresponsible.

None of this should surprise anyone paying attention. This administration is packed with advisors and surrogates who glorify union power, rail against globalization and scoff at the very idea of limited government. Some sound more like Bernie Sanders than Milton Friedman. Whether it’s directing industrial policy or distorting the tax code to reward their favorite behaviors, they are hostile to the competition and liberty of the free market.

Sadly, that hostility has real consequences: higher prices, greater economic uncertainty, sluggish investment and fewer opportunities for middle- and lower-class families.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to approve a sweeping package of minimum wage increases for workers in the tourism industry, despite objections from business leaders who warned that the region is already facing a slowdown in international travel.

The proposal, billed by labor leaders as the highest minimum wage in the country, would require hotels with more than 60 rooms, as well as companies doing business at Los Angeles International Airport, to pay their workers $30 per hour by 2028.

That translates to a 48% hike in the minimum wage for hotel employees over three years. Airport workers would see a 56% increase.

On top of that, hotels and airport businesses would be required to provide $8.35 per hour for their workers’ health care by July 2026.

The package of increases was approved on a 12-3 vote, with Councilmembers John Lee, Traci Park and Monica Rodriguez opposed. Because the tally was not unanimous, a second vote will be required next week.

Rodriguez, who represents the northeast San Fernando Valley, told her colleagues that the proposal would cause hotels and airport businesses to cut back on staffing, resulting in job losses. The same thing is happening at City Hall, with elected officials considering staff cuts to cover the cost of employee raises, she said.

“We are right now facing 1,600 imminent layoffs because the revenue is just not matching our expenditures,” Rodriguez said. “The same will happen in the private sector.”

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, standing before a crowded of unionized workers after the vote, celebrated their victory.

“It’s been way too long, but finally, today, this building is working for the people, not the corporations,” said Soto-Martínez, a former organizer with the hotel and restaurant union Unite Here Local 11.

Hotel owners, business groups and airport concession companies predicted the wage increases will deal a fresh blow to an industry that never fully recovered from the COVID pandemic. They pointed to the recent drop-off in tourism from Canada and elsewhere that followed President Trump’s trade war and tightening of the U.S. border.

Adam Burke, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, said Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom — nations that send a large number of visitors to Los Angeles — have issued formal advisories about visiting the U.S.

“The 2025 outlook is not encouraging,” Burke said.

Several hotel owners have warned that the higher wage will spur them to scale back their restaurant operations. A few flatly stated that hotel companies would steer clear of future investments in the city, which has long served as a global tourism destination.

Jackie Filla, president and chief executive of the Hotel Association of Los Angeles, said she believes that hotels will close restaurants or other small businesses on their premises — and in some cases, shut down entirely.

In the short term, she said, some will tear up their “room block” agreements, which set aside rooms for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“I don’t think anybody wants to do this,” Filla said. “Hotels are excited to host guests. They’re excited to be participating in the Olympics. But they can’t go into it losing money.”

Jessica Durrum, a policy director with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a pro-union advocacy group, said business leaders also issued dire warnings about the economy when previous wage increases were approved — only to be proven wrong. Durrum, who is in charge of her group’s Tourism Workers Rising campaign, told the council that a higher wage would only benefit the region.

“People with more money in their pockets — they spend it,” she said.

Wednesday’s vote delivered a huge victory to Unite Here Local 11, a potent political force at City Hall. The union is known for knocking on doors for favored candidates, spending six figures in some cases to get them elected.

Unite Here Local 11 had billed the proposal as an “Olympic wage,” one that would ensure that its members have enough money to keep up with inflation. The union, working with airport workers represented by Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West, also said that corporations should not be the only ones to benefit from the Olympic Games in 2028.

Workers from both of those unions testified about their struggles to pay for rising household costs, including rent, food and fuel. Some pleaded for better health care, while others spoke about having to work multiple jobs to support their families.

“We need these wages. Please do what’s right,” said Jovan Houston, a customer service agent at LAX. “Do this for workers. Do this for single families. Do this for parents like myself.”

Sonia Ceron, 38, a dishwasher at airline catering company Flying Food Group, said she has a second job cleaning houses in Beverly Hills for about 32 hours a week. Ceron lives in a small studio apartment in Inglewood, which has been difficult for her 12-year-old daughter.

“My daughter, like every kid, wants to have her own room, to be able to call her friends and have her privacy. Right now, that’s impossible,” Ceron said.

L.A.’s political leaders have enacted a number of wage laws over the last few decades. The hotel minimum wage, approved by the council in 2014, currently stands at $20.32 per hour. The minimum wage for private-sector employees at LAX is $25.23 per hour, once the required $5.95 hourly healthcare payment is included.

For nearly everyone else in L.A., the hourly minimum wage is $17.28, 78 cents higher than the state’s.

SACRAMENTO — In the largest gathering of 2026 gubernatorial candidates to date, seven Democrats vying to lead California courted labor leaders on Monday, vowing to support pro-union agreements on housing and infrastructure projects, regulation of artificial intelligence, and government funding for university research.

Throughout most of the hourlong event, the hundreds of union members inside the Sacramento hotel ballroom embraced the pro-labor pledges and speeches that dominated the candidates’ remarks, though some boos rose from the crowd when former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa strayed from the other Democrats on stage.

Villaraigosa was the only candidate to raise objections when asked if he would support providing state unemployment benefits to striking workers, saying it would depend on the nature and length of the labor action. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023 vetoed a bill that would have provided that coverage, saying it would make the state’s unemployment trust fund “vulnerable to insolvency.”

The Monday night event was part of a legislative conference held by the California Federation of Labor Unions and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, two of the most influential labor organizations in the state capital.

Villaraigosa was joined on stage by former state Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee. All are running to replace Newsom, who is serving his second and final term as governor.

Throughout most of the event, the candidates were peppered with yes-or-no questions, answering with the wave of a red flag for “no” or green flag for “yes.”

The event was not without its frosty moments, including when the candidates were asked whether, as governor, they would be “pragmatic and stop targeting California’s oil and gas industry in ways that jeopardize union jobs and force us to rely on dirtier imported energy.”

Some of the candidates raised their green flags timidly. California’s Democratic leaders, including Newsom and top state lawmakers, have been major proponents of transitioning to renewable energy and imposing more restrictions on the state’s oil and gas industry.

“We all want a clean environment going forward,” Yee said, “but it cannot be on the backs of workers.”

Villaraigosa, in remarks after the event, said he challenged the idea of jumping into electrification too quickly, which would affect union jobs and increase the cost of utilities and energy across the state.

“Closing down refineries, telling people to get rid of their gas stove and gas water heater is just poppycock,” he said.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, praised the Democratic candidates for showing strong support for unionized workers. She’s hopeful that each would be more receptive to some pivotal union concerns than Newsom, such as the regulation of artificial intelligence, a major threat to union jobs, she said.

“When we’re talking about things like regulating AI — we can’t even get a conversation out of Gavin Newsom about any regulation — I think that was, that was a key thing. They all threw up their green flag,” Gonzalez said.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is weighing a run for governor, declined an invitation to address the conference.

The State Building and Construction Trades Council represents hundreds of thousands of workers in the state, including bricklayers, ironworkers and painters, among many others.

The Labor Federation is a formidable power in California politics and policy, expected to help coordinate the spending of as much as $40 million by unions in next year’s election. The federation is an umbrella group for about 1,300 unions that represent around 2.3 million workers in the public and private sectors.

The organization has backed all of the gubernatorial candidates in various prior races, although it opposed Villaraigosa in the 2005 mayor’s race and supported Newsom over Villaraigosa in the 2018 gubernatorial race.

The latter decision was driven by the arc Villaraigosa has taken from his roots as a union leader to a critic of Los Angeles’ teachers union and supporter of charter schools and reform of teacher-tenure rules.

Times staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this report.

Perched high above the Cahuenga Pass, the 24-story Hilton Los Angeles Universal City Hotel is positioned to be a prime gathering spot for visitors arriving for the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Sun Hill Properties Inc., which manages the 495-room hotel, has already signed a “room block” agreement with the LA28 organizing committee, reserving hundreds of rooms for Olympics fans. The City Council recently approved a plan to let the Hilton add a second, 18-story tower, which would open just in time for the Olympics.

Now, the future of the $250-million expansion is in doubt. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council is set to vote on a requirement that hotels with 60 or more rooms pay their workers at least $30 per hour by 2028, along with a new $8.35 per hour healthcare payment.

If the council approves the proposal without significant changes, Sun Hill “absolutely will be pulling out of the room block for the Olympics,” said Mark Davis, the company’s president and chief executive. The hotel’s investors will also kill the 395-room expansion, he said.

“Our board was very adamant that if [council members] go forward with this nonsense, that it’s dead,” Davis said. “They’re going to move the project somewhere else.”

The council voted 12-3 last year to instruct City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to draft the package of minimum wage hikes, which would apply not just to hotels but also private companies at Los Angeles International Airport, such as airlines and concessions. The minimum wage would be the highest in the country, according to Unite Here Local 11, the hotel and restaurant workers union, which has championed the proposal.

Mark Davis, president and CEO of Sun Hill Properties, said a proposal to hike L.A.’s minimum wage for hotel workers would kill a plan for a new 18-story hotel tower unless it is reworked.

(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)

Backers of the higher wage say L.A.’s tourism workers are struggling to pay for food and rent, and deserve to benefit financially from the Olympics just as much as private corporations. They dismiss the hospitality industry’s dire warnings, including the notion that increased wages will scuttle the development of new hotels.

City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said the Sheraton Universal Hotel, a nearby competitor of the Hilton, has already been paying a higher wage to its unionized workforce. The real threat to the development of new hotels, he said, is higher interest rates and the economic uncertainty surrounding President Trump’s trade policies.

“So, I just don’t buy it,” said Soto-Martínez, a former hotel union organizer, as he referred to Davis’ warning.

Under the city’s proposal, the hotel and airport minimum wage would reach $22.50 on July 1. It would jump to $25 in July 2026, $27.50 in July 2027 and $30 in July 2028. On top of those increases, the $8.35 per hour healthcare payment would go into effect on Jan. 1.

Business groups point out that two hotels have closed in the past year — Four Points by Sheraton next to LAX and Mama Shelter in Hollywood, for a loss of 270 jobs. They say Trump’s trade wars are driving down tourist activity from other nations, with visitors from Canada especially lagging.

Once the increases are in effect, business leaders say, hotels with on-site dining won’t be able to compete with non-hotel restaurants, which will have a much lower minimum wage.

Jon Bortz, chairman and chief executive of the Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, said his company is already looking at scaling back restaurant operations at two of its Southern California properties — the Kimpton Hotel Palomar and the W Los Angeles West Beverly Hills, both in Westwood near UCLA.

The Palomar will likely offset the cost of the higher minimum wage by converting its restaurant into a self-service breakfast operation, while the W will probably close at least one of its two restaurants, Bortz said. “We have to change the business model of these properties to have any hope of surviving,” he added.

Bortz said the proposed wage hikes, along with other hotel regulations approved by the City Council in recent years, have spurred Pebblebrook to look to other markets for new hotel projects.

“Frankly, the [L.A.] market, from a broad-based buyer perspective, has been crossed off the map by investors,” he said.

Hotels in other parts of L.A. are considering similar reductions. An executive with Lightstone Group, which owns the 727-room Moxy + AC Hotels near the Convention Center, told City Council members last year that the minimum wage proposal would likely result in the closure of Level 8, a collection of restaurants on the hotel’s eighth floor.

Mark Beccaria, a partner with the Hotel Angeleno near the 405 Freeway, said in a separate letter to city leaders that he would have to shutter not just the hotel’s restaurant but also its valet parking, eliminating 39 jobs.

“Common sense says you cannot raise wages over 50% in a year when revenues are down,” he said.

Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, accused the hotels of fear-mongering, saying they are misrepresenting the potential impact of the planned wage hikes. Hotel owners, he said, “act like the sky is falling every time they have to share profits with their workers.”

“This ‘Chicken Little’ stuff has got to end. Every single time, hotels cry poverty, and then a day later, they’re doing fine. It’s always the same routine,” Petersen said. “What’s not falling is rent and healthcare. What’s not sustainable is workers not earning enough to live in Los Angeles.”

The hospitality industry issued similar warnings a decade ago — when the council approved the current hotel minimum wage — only to see tourism flourish in the years that immediately followed, said Víctor Sánchez, executive director of the L.A. Alliance for a New Economy, a pro-labor advocacy group that produced a report on that phenomenon.

In Long Beach, where residents voted to raise the hotel minimum wage last year, revenue per available room was up 15.7% in March compared with the same month the prior year, said Sánchez, citing data from the real estate group CoStar.

L.A.’s political leaders have enacted a number of wage laws over the last few decades. The hotel minimum wage, approved by the council in 2014, is currently $20.32 per hour. The minimum wage for private-sector employees at LAX is $25.23 per hour, once the required $5.95 hourly healthcare payment is included. Then there’s the minimum wage for nearly everyone else in L.A., which is $17.28 per hour — 78 cents higher than the state’s.

The hourly minimum wage for hotel and airport workers was already slated to go up this year, as part of regularly scheduled increases in the city’s wage laws. Once the council showed interest in the much larger increases, business leaders began warning that hotel developers would take their business elsewhere.

Few were as dramatic as Davis, who told council members that their proposal, as drafted, would “likely kill” the Universal City Hilton’s 395-room expansion.

Davis, whose company has hotels in Simi Valley, Colorado Springs, Colo., and the greater Denver area, said his board instructed him last year to look at acquiring property outside of California, in markets that “make more sense financially for an investment of $250 million.”

“The owners investing this money, they have to look at the numbers,” he said in an interview. “Any project survives only by its numbers.”

The Universal City Hilton already pays most of its workers more than $25 per hour, while also offering healthcare coverage, Davis said. If those health plans have a financial value lower than the $8.35 per hour, the company will need to make up the difference, he said.

Davis said he, too, is looking at scaling back restaurant operations, which would likely require layoffs.

At one point, Davis’ project drew support from the city’s political leaders.

The Universal City Hilton reached an agreement early on with construction trade unions, promising to pay a higher prevailing wage to the estimated 1,000 construction workers who would work on the new tower.

In August, the council voted unanimously to seek an economic analysis that would determine whether the city should provide taxpayer assistance to the project. The analysis, requested by Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Soto-Martínez, would have explored whether to allow the hotel to keep a share of the tax revenues generated by the new tower.

Raman, whose district includes a portion of Universal City, did not respond to questions from The Times about the project — or the potential impact of the higher tourism wage.

In recent days, the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles has been appealing directly to Mayor Karen Bass, purchasing digital ads that ask her to intervene on the minimum wage issue.

Bass, in an interview earlier this year, said she wants hotel workers to “make a decent living” while also ensuring that their employers “are able to survive.”

“We have to make sure that we can address both — that we can address the needs of the workers without crippling the industry,” she said.

SALINAS, Calif. — Every year, farmers in this fertile valley dubbed the “salad bowl of the world” rely on tens of thousands of workers to harvest leafy greens and juicy strawberries. But with local farmworkers aging — and the Trump administration’s determined crackdown on the illegal workers who have long been the backbone of California’s agricultural workforce — more growers have been looking to legal channels to import foreign workers.

Under the federal H-2A visa program, agricultural employers can hire workers from other countries on a temporary basis, so long as they show that they were unable to hire sufficient numbers of domestic workers. Employers are required to provide the guest workers with housing, food and transportation.

But in Monterey County, one of the more expensive regions in the nation, the obligation to provide an exploding number of guest workers with suitable housing was exacerbating a regional affordable housing crisis. Growers and labor contractors were buying up single-family homes and motels — often the residence of last resort for people on the verge of homelessness — making housing even more scarce for low-wage workers living in the region year-round.

Migrant workers, hired through Fresh Harvest, pick romaine lettuce in King City.

For some large farming companies in the county, the solution has been to privately fund the construction of new housing facilities for H-2A workers. Since 2015, local growers have invested their own capital and often their own land to build at least eight housing complexes for thousands of guest workers.

These are not akin to the crude barracks used to house the Mexican guest workers known as braceros decades ago, nor are they the broken-down trailers associated with abuses of the H-2A program. Rather, many of the new housing developments here are built along the lines of modern multi-family townhomes, outfitted with recreational areas and laundry facilities. County leaders, eager to support the agricultural industry and increase the overall housing supply, have thrown their support behind the effort, expediting the permitting processes for such developments.

Some community members are skeptical of this approach. Neighbors have raised concerns about the impacts of building large housing developments primarily for single men. Some advocates say it is a grave injustice that growers are building housing for foreign guest workers, while farmworkers who settled in the region years ago often persist in substandard and overcrowded buildings.

Israel Francisco, with sons Gael and Elias, is among the longtime farmworkers in Monterey County who crowd into homes with extended family and roommates because of the lack of affordable housing.

“The growers are building housing for H-2A workers, because they have the power, because they have the land, and because they have the money,” said Nidia Soto, an organizer with Building Healthy Communities Monterey County.

Domestic farmworkers — many of whom emigrated decades ago, started families and put down roots — don’t directly benefit from that development, she said: “Even though they are breaking their backs every day to bring food to the table, they are not worthy of housing.”

County Supervisor Luis Alejo agreed there is a dire need for more affordable housing for local farmworkers, but called the grower-funded H-2A housing developments a “win-win for the community.”

“When we’re providing housing for H-2A workers, it is not exacerbating the housing crisis elsewhere in our community,” he said.

A key issue in the discussion is that many of the longtime farmworkers who live in Monterey County are in the U.S. without authorization, as is true across California. At least half of the estimated 255,700 farmworkers in California are undocumented, according to UC Merced research.

With the Trump administration’s focus on upending America’s immigration system and deporting undocumented immigrants, California growers are scrambling to stabilize their labor supply through legal avenues such as the H-2A visa program.

For years, farmworker advocates have voiced concerns about the H-2A program, saying it is ripe for exploitation because a worker’s permission to be in the country is tied to the employer. And, as long as their labor supply was sufficient, many growers were reluctant to scale up the program, because it requires them to invest in federally compliant housing and, in many cases, to pay higher wages to meet a federal requirement of nearly $20 an hour.

But with the Trump administration vowing mass deportations — and a growing number of undocumented immigrants considering “self-deportation” — the sufficiency of the workforce is suddenly in question.

Steve Scaroni, right, founder of Fresh Harvest, speaks with foreman Javier Patron, as workers line up to wash their hands before going back to work harvesting lettuce in King City.

“If we get immigration enforcement, there’s going to be crops rotting in the field,” said Steve Scaroni, founder of Imperial County-based Fresh Harvest, one of the largest enterprises in the country for importing guest workers.

Could Monterey County offer a solution for the rest of the state?

In 2015, Tanimura & Antle, one of the region’s largest agricultural companies, recruited Avila Construction Co. to build housing for 800 H-2A workers in the community of Spreckels outside Salinas.

The grower wanted the project built within one year, which was “kind of unheard of,” because getting housing approved that quickly was nearly impossible, according to Mike Avila, the construction company owner. But Tanimura & Antle faced a dire situation: They couldn’t hire a stable domestic workforce, and risked having crops go unharvested if they didn’t invest in a plan to hire guest workers.

Some local residents opposed the proposed development, citing the dangers of having hundreds more men living in the area and raising concerns about road congestion. But the Board of Supervisors ultimately pushed the project forward.

“We’ve been very, very fortunate that these projects have been built and those fears don’t end up coming to fruition,” Avila said. He noted that employers are required to provide H-2A workers with transportation by bus or van, reducing the number of cars on the road.

After a day of work, migrant farmworkers return to a housing complex for H-2A guest workers in the city of Greenfield in Monterey County.

Tanimura & Antle’s complex pioneered a new model of guest worker housing in the region, and also gave the company an edge. Once Tanimura & Antle built the complex, it was able to recruit migrant farmworkers from other states, Avila said. It wasn’t until recently that the company began housing H-2A workers in the facility.

Avila, meanwhile, has become the go-to construction company for grower-funded employee housing. The company typically builds dormitory-style townhomes on land owned by growers. Today, the company averages a project a year.

Migrant workers relax in the community room at a converted H-2A housing site operated by Fresh Harvest in King City. The site features dormitory-style rooms that sleep up to 14 workers.

Fresh Harvest converted a tomato packaging plant in Monterey County into clean, livable housing for about 360 migrant farmworkers.

The number of H-2A visas certified for Monterey County has ballooned since that first grower-funded housing development went up.

The federal Labor Department certified more than 8,100 H-2A visas for the county in 2023, a nearly 60% increase from 2018, according to a report from the UC Davis Labor and Community Center of the Greater Capital Region. Compared with other California counties, Monterey had the highest number of visa certifications by several thousand.

Migrant workers, hired through Fresh Harvest, harvest and bag romaine lettuce in King City.

Some agricultural employers have had to get creative to meet the housing requirements.

Fresh Harvest houses anywhere between 5,000 and 6,000 guest workers across the U.S. But one of Scaroni’s favorite projects is in King City in a shuttered tomato packaging plant that sat empty until he asked officials about converting it into farmworker housing in 2016.

“The city thought we were crazy,” he recalled. “But there was something in me that said, ‘I think we can make it work.’”

Today, Fresh Harvest’s Meyer Farmworker Housing has space for about 360 workers. The company turned the so-called ripening rooms, where tomatoes once were stored, into dorm rooms that hold 14 workers each.

The dorm rooms are lined with lockers and bunk beds, which workers decorate with colorful blankets. The shared bathroom features a long row of stainless steel sinks and showers, and workers can relax in a community room lined with couches, laundry machines and a TV.

Company officials also tout their impact on King City’s downtown. Broadway Street had defunct storefronts when Fresh Harvest began leasing the property. Now, a La Plaza Bakery opens before sunrise and caters to workers headed to the fields, and restaurants line the streets.

Cristina Cruz Mendoza recently relocated her store, Cristina’s Clothing and More, to Broadway. She sells an array of clothing and gear worn by farmworkers, and says the workers who live nearby have made a big difference to her sales.

“We’re all co-workers, and we all respect each other,” Julio Cesar said of the guest workers taking part in the H-2A visa program through Fresh Harvest in King City.

Julio Cesar, who has worked with Fresh Harvest for six seasons, said he likes the Meyer facility because of its cleanliness and how cool it stays. He and the other workers who live there often head downtown after working in the broccoli fields.

“We’re all co-workers, and we all respect each other,” he said. “We sometimes go to the stores, do some shopping. Sometimes we go for a walk to relax.”

Even as Monterey County celebrates its successes in building model housing for H-2A guest workers, housing for the thousands of longtime farm laborers who are not part of the visa program continues to stagnate.

A 2018 report from the California Institute for Rural Studies found communities across the Salinas Valley in Monterey County and Pajaro Valley in neighboring Santa Cruz County needed more than 45,000 new units of housing to alleviate critical overcrowding in farmworker households. But building such developments without grower investment requires local governments to cobble together financing, which can be difficult for rural communities.

That’s left many farmworker families struggling to afford rent while earning minimum wage, $16.50 an hour. The situation is especially acute in Salinas, where the City Council recently voted to repeal a short-lived ordinance that capped annual rent increases on multi-family residences built before February 1995.

Amalia Francisco, a 32-year-old immigrant from southern Mexico, shares a three-bedroom house in Salinas with her three brothers and other roommates. It often takes at least three or four families to cover the monthly rent of $5,000, she said.

Francisco makes about $800 a week picking strawberries — that is, if she’s lucky to get a full 40 hours. Her last paycheck was just $200, she said. She feels like she never has enough money to cover her portion of the rent, along with food and other expenses.

Israel Francisco enters the Salinas home that he shares with his sister, Amalia, and other roommates to help cover the $5,000 monthly rent.

Farmworker Aquilino Vasquez pays $2,400 a month to live in a two-bedroom apartment with his wife, three daughters and father-in-law. They have lived there for a decade, but over the past two years Vasquez said he has grown frustrated with the way the property is managed.

When black mold appeared on the ceiling, he said, he was told he was responsible for cleaning it. He said he had to complain to the city to get smoke detectors installed, and that rats have chewed through walls in the bathroom and kitchen.

Vasquez, an immigrant from Oaxaca, said it is unjust that his family’s well-being is at risk, while guest workers are being provided with quality housing.

“They’re building, they’re always building, but for the contract workers,” he said.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Trump administration must halt much of its widescale downsizing of the federal workforce, a California judge ordered Friday.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed by labor unions and cities last week, one of multiple legal challenges to President Trump’s efforts to drastically shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and too expensive.

“The Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime,” Illston wrote in her order.

The temporary restraining order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Office of Personnel Management and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people. Plaintiffs asked that the effective date of any agency action be postponed and that departments stop implementing or enforcing the executive order, including taking any further action.

They limited their request to departments where dismantlement is underway or poised to begin, including at the Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March it would lay off 10,000 workers and centralize divisions.

Illston, who was nominated to the bench by former President Clinton, said at a hearing Friday that a president has authority to seek changes in the executive branch departments and agencies created by Congress.

“But he must do so in lawful ways,” she said. “He must do so with the cooperation of Congress; the Constitution is structured that way.”

Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped Musk, his billionaire advisor and major campaign donor, to lead the charge through DOGE.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave as a result of Trump’s government-shrinking efforts. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.

Lawyers for the government argued Friday that the executive order and memo calling for large-scale personnel reductions and reorganization plans provided only general principles that agencies should follow in their own decision-making process.

“It expressly invites comments and proposals for legislative engagement as part of policies that those agencies wish to implement,” Eric Hamilton, a deputy assistant attorney general, said of the memo. “It is setting out guidance.”

But Danielle Leonard, an attorney for plaintiffs, said it was clear that the president, DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management were making decisions outside their authority and not inviting dialogue from agencies.

“They are not waiting for these planning documents” to go through long processes, she said. “They’re not asking for approval, and they’re not waiting for it.”

The temporary restraining order applies to agencies including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, Interior, State, Treasury and Veteran Affairs.

It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

Some of the labor unions and nonprofit groups who filed the lawsuit are also plaintiffs in another suit before a San Francisco judge challenging the mass firings of probationary workers. In that case, Judge William Alsup ordered the government in March to reinstate those workers, but the U.S. Supreme Court blocked his order.

Plaintiffs include the cities of San Francisco, Chicago and Baltimore; the American Federation of Government Employees union; and nonprofit groups Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Taxpayer Rights and Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.

Har writes for the Associated Press.

PARIS — French union leaders condemned the “Trumpization” of world politics, while in Italy, May Day protesters paraded a puppet of the American president through the streets of Turin.

Across continents, hundreds of thousands turned out for Thursday’s rallies marking International Workers’ Day, many united in anger over President Trump’s agenda — including aggressive tariffs stoking fears of global economic turmoil and immigration crackdowns.

In the United States, organizers framed this year’s protests as a pushback against what they called a sweeping assault on labor protections, diversity initiatives and federal employees.

In Germany, union leaders warned that extended workdays and rising anti-immigrant sentiment were dismantling labor protections. In Bern, Switzerland, thousands marched behind banners denouncing fascism and war — part of a wider backlash against the global surge of hard-right politics.

In France, protests included appearances by far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon and also reflected simmering anger over U.S. military and trade influence in Europe — a theme echoed in speeches condemning Washington’s role in global instability.

Trump-fueled economic fears shadow Asia

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te cited new U.S. tariffs under Trump as he promoted a sweeping economic package aimed at shoring up jobs and industry. In the Philippines, protest leader Mong Palatino warned that “tariff wars and policies of Trump” threatened local industries and people’s livelihoods.

In Japan, Trump’s image loomed over the day — quite literally — as a truck in the Tokyo march carried a doll made to resemble him. Demonstrators there called for higher wages, gender equality, healthcare, disaster relief, a ceasefire in Gaza, and an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“For our children to be able to live with hope, the rights of workers must be recognized,” said Junko Kuramochi, a member of a mothers’ group in Tokyo.

Tadashi Ito, a union construction worker, said he feared the rising cost of imported raw materials.

“Everybody is fighting over work, and so the contracts tend to go where the wages are cheapest,” he said. “We think peace comes first. And we hope Trump will eradicate conflict and inequalities.”

Worries over American tariffs

Under overcast skies in Taipei, about 2,500 union members marched from the presidential office, representing sectors from fisheries to telecommunications. Protesters warned that Trump’s tariffs could lead to job losses.

“This is why we hope the government can propose plans to protect the rights of laborers,” said union leader Carlos Wang. An autoworkers’ union carried a cutout car topped with a photo of Trump.

President Lai said his administration had submitted a 410-billion New Taiwan dollar ($12.8-billion) bill to support local industry and shield the economy from global shocks.

In Manila, thousands of Filipino workers rallied near the presidential palace, where police blocked access with barricades. Protesters demanded wage hikes and stronger protections for local jobs and small businesses.

In Jakarta, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto addressed a cheering crowd at the National Monument Park.

“The government that I lead will work as hard as possible to eliminate poverty from Indonesia,” he said.

Roughly 200,000 workers were expected to take part in May Day rallies across Southeast Asia’s largest economy, according to Said Iqbal, president of the Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions. Their demands included wage increases, an end to outsourcing, and stronger protections for both domestic and migrant laborers.

Istanbul mayor’s arrest is focus of protests in Turkey

In Turkey, May Day served as a platform not only for labor rights but for broader calls to uphold democratic values. Tens of thousands gathered on Istanbul’s Asian shore in Kadikoy for a rally, some railing against the jailing of Istanbul’s opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.

His imprisonment in March sparked the country’s largest protests in more than a decade. Authorities blocked access to central Istanbul and shut down transit lines. A law association said that more than 400 protesters were arrested before midday near Taksim Square including lawyers trying to follow the detentions.

A big rally planned in L.A.

Los Angeles is expected to host one of the world’s largest May Day events this year — just days after Trump passed the 100-day mark of his return to office. Organizers say the protests reflect mounting frustration with policies they see as favoring tycoons over workers and corporations over communities.

While the demonstrations focus on labor rights, many also took aim at the administration’s efforts to weaken unions, reduce the federal workforce, and curb protections for immigrants. Across the country, hundreds of rallies were planned by labor unions, student groups and grassroots coalitions, echoing a broader call to prioritize public services over private profits and working families over wealthy elites.

A banner at the L.A. march summarized the day’s theme: “One Struggle, One Fight — Workers Unite!”

“We’re bringing the fight to the billionaires and politicians who are trying to divide us with fear and lies. We know the truth — an attack on immigrant workers is an attack on all workers,” said April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 2 million workers.

Adamson and Kageyama write for the Associated Press. Kageyama reported from Tokyo. AP journalists Nicolas Garriga and Masha Macpherson in Paris, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Joeal Calupitan in Manila, Andrew Wilks in Istanbul, Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sophia Tareen in Chicago and Taijing Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.