For months Hotel Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles has been locked in a labor dispute over restaurant staff who were let go after they attempted to unionize.

On Wednesday, the union representing the workers announced it had reached a tentative deal that requires the hotel to take over operations of a cafe, a bar and staff kitchen from a contractor and rehire some of the laid-off employees.

The deal is part of a broader agreement between the hotel and the union, Unite Here Local 11, that covers about 60 housekeepers, front desk workers and engineers, said Unite Here Local 11 spokesperson Maria Hernandez. If approved by the workers, the deal would put an end to intermittent work stoppages that have roiled the hotel for more than a year.

Under the agreement, non-tipped workers would see higher wages, including an immediate $5-per-hour wage boost, as well as other benefits. The union reached a similar tentative agreement this week with the Glendale Hilton.

For more than a year, Unite Here Local 11 has led a strike that initially involved about 60 hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties, where contracts covering more than 15,000 workers expired in June of last year. All but a few had eventually agreed to new contracts, but Hotel Figueroa and a handful of others held out.

Rahim Ladha, a spokesperson for private equity firm BentallGreenOak, or BGO, which owns Hotel Figueroa, confirmed the firm as well as the hotel’s operator, Highgate Hotels, had agreed to the deal, but declined to provide other comment.

As the union continues to try to hash out agreements with the remaining hotels, one of Unite Here’s three presidents, Kurt Petersen, said the union is determined to extract greater concessions from the holdouts. “If you fight, you pay more. That’s our mantra. Everyone who has decided to lengthen this fight, they need to pay a bit of a tax.”

Nohelia Gonzalez, who has worked as a housekeeper at the hotel for three years, said the contract campaign has been difficult for her and other workers. On a typical morning, she wakes up at 3:40 a.m. to make the three-hour commute on public transportation from the San Fernando Valley to get to the hotel before her 8 a.m. shift. But during the strike, she would wake up even earlier to make it to 7 a.m. picket lines.

Gonzalez, 54, was on the picket line in January when several of her co-workers were bruised by small metal balls fired by some sort of air rifle.

“It’s been really tough, we’ve had horrible experiences,” Gonzalez said. “It was a long, hard-fought battle. [The agreement] means the world to so many of us.”

It was not clear exactly how many laid-off food and beverage workers would be hired back. Sparrow Italia and La Casita at Driftwood, two other dining establishments at the famed hotel that were shuttered in February, were not included in the agreement and remain closed.

Recalled employees who choose to come back to work at Café Fig, Bar Magnolia and the cafeteria for workers will be folded into the already existing bargaining unit of Hotel Figueroa workers, but their terms of employment will need to be separately negotiated, said Hernandez, the union spokesperson.

Tensions among restaurant workers at Hotel Figueroa flared soon after hospitality group Noble 33 took over food and beverage operations for the hotel in 2021, according to workers and union organizers. Workers said they were forced to take on multiple jobs without more pay as their colleagues left and management didn’t back-fill positions.

In December, back-of-house food and beverage workers for Noble 33 notified their management that they intended to form a union and submitted the necessary paperwork to do so. Days later, Noble 33 announced it was shuttering all food and drink services at the hotel.

Noble 33 followed through on the closures and laid off an estimated 100 employees in February.

Soon after, the hotel brought in a new third-party management company to take over food and beverage services. Unite Here Local 11 filed a complaint with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office alleging the hotel and the new food operator had violated the city’s “right to return” law that requires new hotel owners or new operators to keep the site’s employees during a transitional period.

Hotel Figueroa at the time denied the premise of the workers’ complaint, stating that it was acting in accordance with worker retention laws.

When August rolls around, Gloria Ponce braces for the line she knows she’ll need to add to the family budget.

The San Gabriel mother of six shells out hundreds of dollars every summer to get her four school-age kids ready for the school year with new supplies, clothes and shoes.

The expenses include accessories, backpacks and pencils and total about $300 to $500 per child, she said. It’s a financial strain on her family that’s worse this year because high inflation rates in recent years have ramped up the price of basic goods.

“We always end up putting money aside a few months before because we know this is going to hit us like a ton of bricks,” said Ponce, who has four children in Los Angeles public schools.

Ponce is hardly alone. Los Angeles parents will spend almost $200 more this year than last on back-to-school expenses and 57% more than the national average, according to a survey conducted by consulting firm Deloitte.

One mother reported spending around $30 more on the same backpack and lunchbox she bought last year.

“I can absorb that, but so many families don’t have that luxury,” she wrote in a Facebook thread on back-to-school shopping. “What are they supposed to do?”

The Deloitte survey found that Los Angeles parents are spending an average of $921 per child on back-to-school shopping compared with a national average of $586, which was slightly lower than last year’s national average. More than half of Angelenos surveyed said their top reason for spending more was a general increase in prices compared with last year.

Seventy-three percent of consumers nationally said they are concerned about rising prices for everyday purchases and are allotting higher budgets for nondiscretionary expenses. Across income levels, parents are weighing prices and priorities as they prepare for the new school year.

“Inflation is top of every consumer’s mind,” said Rebecca Lohrey, Deloitte’s Los Angeles-based audit and assurance partner. “Similar to how everybody in the country is feeling, Los Angeles parents expect things to cost more.”

For some, the rise in prices means stricter budgeting. Low- and middle-income parents are spending less on back-to-school items year over year and are cutting back on other expenses to save money, according to the survey, which had 529 respondents in Los Angeles and 1,198 nationally.

But in Los Angeles, the average parent is spending more in every category, including clothing and accessories, tech products and school supplies. Eighty-six percent said they expect to spend the same or more on back-to-school items this year.

Spending on tech products saw the biggest jump from last year, with Los Angeles parents spending $648 on tech in 2024 versus $527 in 2023. Nationally, parents spent $431 on tech this year and $499 last year.

Lohrey said three factors are driving the increase in spending among Los Angeles families: the rising cost of goods, additional spending for extracurricular activities and a willingness to splurge on must-have brands.

Nine out of 10 Los Angeles parents enroll their children in extracurricular activities, the survey found, and they plan to spend roughly $700 on fees and equipment.

That number varies significantly based on income level. Families with an annual income of less than $50,000 will spend an average of $387 on extracurriculars, but families that earn more than $100,000 will spend $902, according to the survey.

Regardless of income, 72% of Los Angeles parents said their child’s preferences influence how much they spend. More than 9 in 10 parents in the area said they’re willing to splurge on the items their children want most in hopes of boosting their confidence and easing the transition back to school.

A Studio City parent who asked to be identified by only her first name, Lisa, because of privacy concerns, said her 13-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter want new clothes, shoes and backpacks every year, not to mention the must-have items that pop up each year such as Stanley water bottles, which cost around $35.

This year, Lisa said, her daughter was asking for a pair of Adidas Samba sneakers, which cost around $100.

The Deloitte survey found that more parents prioritize clothes and accessories over school supplies. If their budget is too tight, 37% of Los Angeles parents said they would first cut back on supplies such as notebooks and pencils. Twenty-six percent said they would first cut back on clothing.

“I don’t know that it’s a necessity, but it feels like a necessity,” Lisa said of the sneakers. “You don’t want her to be the only kid who doesn’t fit in.”

A private judge, not a Los Angeles jury, will render a verdict in the lawsuit seeking more than $770 million in damages from City National Bank over its alleged role in aiding a Ponzi scheme led by actor Zachary Horwitz.

U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder recently ruled in favor of a request by the Los Angeles bank to have the case handled by a “judicial referee,” an alternative form of dispute resolution that is similar to arbitration.

In arbitration, which has been criticized for its use by corporate and sexual harassment defendants to hide findings of wrongdoing, hearings are private and the judgments typically final and not made public. By contrast, hearings before judicial referees are technically open to the public, with the judgments also public and subject to appeal.

However, judicial referees can be an attractive option to defendants facing potentially large verdicts since the positions are typically filled by former judges — the kind of arbiters generally seen as being less likely than juries to return multi-billion dollar runaway verdicts.

“It is far less likely, in general, to inflame the passions of a retired judge who has significant experience in handling cases than it is to a jury who, in a lot of instances, this is their one and only case they are ever sitting on,” said attorney John Nadolenco, managing partner of Mayer Brown’s Los Angeles office.

The lawsuit was filed in February by a court-appointed receiver who is trying to recover losses incurred by investors in a Ponzi scheme led by Horwitz, a small-time actor who claimed he had a business acquiring film rights and licensing them to Netflix and other streaming platforms for foreign distribution.

Horwitz, who appeared in a handful of films under the stage name Zach Avery, had no such deals and forged contracts and emails to dupe investors, who poured more than $700 million into the scheme from 2013-19, when by the end of the year Horwitz had trouble raising money. He was arrested in 2021, pleaded guilty to securities fraud and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, owing some $230 million in restitution.

In the lawsuit, the receiver Michele Vives alleged the bank “substantially assisted” Horwitz by “adding an air of legitimacy” to the scheme and — driven by a desire to earn interest on a line of credit and sell Horwitz other services — “bent the rules” and accepted “incomprehensible explanations” about the sources of the funds and the flow of money in the accounts.

The bank said that the case should not be heard by a jury because the terms of the business accounts Horwitz opened at the bank for his company, 1inMM Capital, and related entities allow the bank to have judicial referees resolve disputes. Vives’ attorney unsuccessfully argued that the agreement did not apply to the receiver and that, in any case, the judge had the discretion on whether to appoint a referee. Snyder issued her ruling July 25.

City National defended its decision to block the case from going to a jury.

“Although City National does not comment in detail on pending litigation, we consistently abide by the terms of our agreements. City National will continue to defend itself vigorously and strongly disagrees with the receiver’s allegations,” the bank said in a statement.

An attorney for Vives declined comment, saying the receiver does not talk about active cases.

The two sides must now seek and pay for a referee to handle the litigation, which could move faster than in federal court, due to the busy calendar of district court judges. The law requires that the court post where the proceedings are held so the public can attend.

Ann Kough, a former Los Angeles County Superior Court judge who has worked as an arbitrator and judicial referee for two decades, said she has never had a member of the public attend a judicial reference hearing but that doesn’t mean the public wasn’t aware of the proceedings.

“It’s not really a matter of somebody coming into a room and wanting to listen, but they can see all the documents because they’re part of the the court record,” she said.

While the City National lawsuit has the potential to recover hundreds of millions of dollars for investors fleeced in the Ponzi scheme, the receiver also is seeking to recover funds from investors who made money on the scheme before it fell apart. Those include “aggregators” who brought multiple investors into the scheme and funneled money up to Horwitz.

In addition, the receiver has reached a settlement with a professional services firm that worked with Horwitz and is in settlement discussions with a “major financial institution” that did business with him. Other potential sources of funds include the sale of films Horwitz invested in with the scheme’s proceeds, according to an Aug. 5 update of the receiver’s activities filed in federal court.

Tom Lochtefeld, 61, who lost $150,000 in retirement funds invested in 2019, said he was disappointed to hear that the case was being heard by a judicial referee.

“It should be fully transparent and decided by a judge and jury as far as I’m concerned,” said the Connecticut resident.