The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday postponed a vote on a major boost to wages for hotel and airport workers, voicing concerns that the pay hike could damage the city’s tourism industry.

The council’s decision to put off the vote until Dec. 11 came as hotel owners were threatening to pull out of a deal to provide tens of thousands of rooms during the 2028 Olympic Games if the pay increase is approved, saying it would decimate their bottom line.

The council had been scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to finalize changes to an existing city ordinance that would raise the minimum hourly wage for workers at large hotels and Los Angeles International Airport from the current $20.32 to $25 on Feb. 1. The minimum pay would then climb incrementally each year to reach $30 an hour by July 1, 2028, as the Olympics are set to open.

During a heated discussion of the proposed wage boosts, several council members questioned whether an analysis of the economic impact of the wage hike that was commissioned by the city had been thorough enough.

“People are going to lose their job if we do this as currently proposed,” Councilmember Traci Park said during the meeting.

Doane Liu, executive director of the City Tourism Department, warned the council that the report understated the effect the proposed minimum wage increases would have on the prices of hotel room rates. Higher wages, he said, would lead to “unintended consequences” as hotels would have to increase rates or cut back on staff and services, which would hurt the luxury and convention business.

As Wednesday’s meeting went on, council members introduced several amendments that, if adopted, would narrow the scope of the proposal and slow down its implementation. One amendment suggested by Councilmember John Lee would delay the jump to a $25 hourly minimum wage until six months after occupancy rates at hotels and LAX passenger traffic had returned to pre-pandemic levels. Lee also proposed slowing down the annual increases to $1 each year — a pace that probably would mean not reaching the $30 hourly wage until after the Olympics.

Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the council’s president, directed the city’s chief legislative analyst to answer questions raised by council members in advance of the council’s Dec. 11 meeting. If the council votes at that meeting to have city lawyers rewrite the ordinance, it would still need to vote at a later date on whether to formally approve and implement the wage increases.

After the council moved to table the discussion, dozens of hotel and airport workers represented by unions that backed the wage boosts filed out of council chambers, chanting, “We’ll be back” and waving red and purple signs that read, “Stands with tourism workers” and “Olympic wage now.”

In City Hall’s cavernous lobby, Kurt Petersen, co-president of a union that represents hotel workers, told workers the council had been swayed by pressure from the tourism industry.

“Today some of our council members unfortunately listened to the CEOs,” Petersen said.

Nelly Hernandez, 57, an employee at airline catering company Flying Food Group, said she currently makes $20 per hour, and a wage increase would help her achieve economic stability.

She sends money back home to her sister in El Salvador and wants to be able to save for retirement. “Everything is so expensive right now,” she said.

In a last-ditch effort to sway the council, the board of directors of the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles sent a letter this month to the city’s Olympic organizing committee arguing the proposed ordinance would jeopardize contracts requiring the hotels to provide the committee with about 40,000 rooms during the Games at prices that were negotiated in 2020 with a lower minimum wage in mind. The higher wages, it said, would balloon hotels’ labor costs so much that sticking to the terms of the deal would be untenable.

“Renting rooms under these circumstances would result in devastating financial losses that could not be recouped under any reasonable scenario,” the letter said. “To put it plainly, this staggering increase in costs makes it unfeasible for most if not all signatory hotels to participate in LA28’s hotel room block.”

If the wage hike goes through, the letter said, “many if not all” the hotels represented by the group would use a clause in the contracts to back out of the deal. The rooms were to be used to house thousands of people associated with the International Olympic Committee, the U.S. Olympic Committee, corporate sponsors, journalists and others during the Olympics and Paralympics, the letter said.

Even if the council doesn’t abandon the pay hike altogether, the hotel association said it hoped to be able to persuade the council to amend its terms in order to lessen the financial impact on hotels. Particularly worrisome was a provision in the proposed ordinance that would require hotels to cover an hourly $8.35 “health payment” for workers on top of the wage hikes.

The ordinance was first proposed last year by Councilmembers Curren Price and Katy Yaroslavsky, with Hugo Soto-Martínez and several other council members supporting the measure. Movement forward on the law was stalled for more than a year as contract negotiations between scores of local hotels and Unite Here Local 11, the politically powerful union that represents their workers, were underway.

The push for the increased wages for hotel workers is the latest demonstration of Unite Here Local 11‘s political muscle. A decade ago, the union successfully got elected officials to approve a minimum wage for hotel workers that is higher than the one that covers most other workers in the city, which currently is $17.28.

While the council’s support for the wage hike aligns with the progressive tack elected officials in the city have typically taken, the wage increase proposal comes at a time when voters across the state have been somewhat more ambivalent, rejecting a statewide measure to boost the minimum wage and booting out progressive Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón in the November election.

Workers in the city’s tourism industry have for years raised alarms about the cost of living in Los Angeles, and amid concerns the Olympics will drive up housing costs even more, unions backing the proposed pay hike have said increased pay is necessary to keep workers from being priced out of the city.

An estimated 23,000 workers would be covered by the proposed increases, and about two-thirds of them live in the city of L.A., according to the report released in September, which was commissioned by the city’s chief legislative analyst. Although the majority of those affected by the pay raises would be airport workers, hotel workers’ wages tend to be lower and those employees would therefore receive a bigger boost, according to the report. Airport workers would see average hourly increases of $3.87 and pay for hotel workers would climb on average $6.24, the report finds.

Petersen said the wage proposal is a fair way to improve workers’ lives as hotels and other businesses stand to reap the benefits of the city hosting the Olympics.

“Right now the way it’s set up is a corporate giveaway,” Petersen said of the Olympics. “L.A. should be loud and proud about doing this.”

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

Clint Eastwood’s legal drama “Juror #2” is set to debut on Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service Max on Dec. 20, adding to the controversy over the limited theatrical run for what could be the storied star and filmmaker’s final movie.

The Warner Bros. Pictures film, which was directed by Eastwood and stars Nicholas Hoult as a juror in a high-profile murder trial, had its world premiere last month at the American Film Institute’s festival in Hollywood.

The film was then released in a limited number of theaters starting Nov. 1, leading to outcry that the narrow run was an affront to the legendary actor and director’s career and also a missed opportunity for theaters to capitalize on the 94-year-old Eastwood’s popularity.

To date, the film has played in about 1% of all U.S. theaters and represents just 0.1% to 0.2% of all total show times for every movie in this time span, said Daniel Loria, senior vice president of box office business intelligence at the Boxoffice Co. By contrast, another adult-oriented film, “Conclave,” has made up about 5% to 6% of market share in U.S. show times over the same period, he said. The papal drama has so far garnered almost $28 million in worldwide box office.

Warner Bros. did not report box office figures for “Juror #2,” which reportedly played in only a few dozen U.S. cinemas.

“These types of films perform differently than they did in the pre-pandemic era,” Loria said. “But what we’ve seen from this type of market is that the right type of film can still connect with viewers and succeed on a limited to moderate level. The film was not made available to markets and theaters and parts of the country that would have turned out to see that movie.”

The studio had not publicly disclosed the streaming-first plan until recently, leading many Hollywood observers to question the decision. Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav has taken much heat since taking over the studio, in large part because of decisions to shelve movies such as “Batgirl” and “Coyote vs. Acme.” Those moves were widely seen as part of a larger strategic shift and cost-cutting effort.

The studio has pushed back on the notion that it did Eastwood dirty with its release strategy.

A studio spokesperson said “Juror #2” was always destined for a streaming release on Max, as deals were made for that at the beginning, and filmmakers were aware of and agreed to the plan. The AFI Fest premiere gave the movie a “prestige theatrical showcase” that highlighted Eastwood’s “pedigree and history,” the spokesperson said.

The studio and filmmakers had agreed to reconsider the option to first release the film in a limited theatrical run once the studio had screened the film, the spokesperson said. They added that the limited theatrical run was intended to generate word-of-mouth anticipation ahead of the Max debut.

The filmmakers were made aware of the limited theatrical release in mid-August, according to a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to comment publicly.

Eastwood’s decades-long career has yielded massive theatrical hits, such as “Million Dollar Baby” and “American Sniper,” though his 2021 film “Cry Macho” underperformed at the box office. However, reviews for “Juror #2” have been strong and Eastwood’s name recognition likely could have generated box office traffic, Loria said. “The Mule,” released in 2018, raked in almost $175 million worldwide on a modest budget of $50 million.

“Not everything is going to be ‘American Sniper,’ ” he said. “You can have movies like ‘The Mule’ that are going to be out there and find an audience. But in order to find the audience, … you have to make your movies findable.”

“Juror #2” has managed to find an audience in countries overseas where it did open in theaters, including France. The film has generated $9.6 million in international box office, according to Box Office Mojo.

SpaceX launched its Starship rocket system on its sixth test flight Tuesday, with Donald Trump in attendance at the company’s Texas launchpad.

Trump’s presence underscores the close ties SpaceX owner Elon Musk has established with the president-elect after pouring more than $100 million into his campaign.

The nearly 400-foot-tall structure — which features the Starship spacecraft stacked on top of a Super Heavy booster — lifted off flawlessly at 2 p.m. Pacific Standard Time from Starbase, the company’s Brownsville, Texas-area facility next to the Gulf of Mexico. The uncrewed spacecraft was sent on its way to a splashdown in the Indian Ocean, while the booster returned to earth less than seven minutes later.

The booster completed a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico but was unable to complete a return to the launchpad, where it was to be caught by giant mechanical arms, called “chopsticks,” attached to the launch tower — a remarkable feat first attempted and achieved on Starship’s fifth test flight on Oct. 13.

It wasn’t clear why the booster wasn’t able to return to the launch tower, but SpaceX said factors include the safety of the launch team, the pad and the public.

The test concluded a little over an hour later after Starship fired up its engines again and completed a controlled ocean landing more than 3,000 miles away off the northwest coast of Australia. During its flight, the spacecraft fired its engines in space, a key goal of the test since Starship will need to do that in order to reach the moon.

The Starship launch system is the biggest and most powerful ever built, with more thrust than the giant Saturn V that propelled the Apollo astronauts to the moon. SpaceX has a $4-billion contract to develop a “lunar lander” version of the Starship spacecraft that can return astronauts to the moon as part of its Artemis III mission scheduled for September 2026.

However, Musk developed the rocket system to take astronauts to Mars, something he would like to accomplish during his lifetime. Trump has expressed interest in such an endeavor, wondering why the space agency has been focused on the moon.

“I’m heading to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever to be elevated, not only to Space, but simply by lifting off the ground. Good luck to Elon Musk and the Great Patriots involved in this incredible project!” the president-elect posted Tuesday on the conservative social media network Truth Social before the test flight.

Musk has transformed the space business by creating reusable booster rockets that cut costs, such as the company’s workhorse Falcon 9, which sends satellites into space. Reusing the Super Heavy booster dramatically cuts costs, with each booster powered by 33 engines fueled by methane. The reusable upper Starship spacecraft is powered by six engines.

Musk, who splits time also managing Tesla and his other companies, was appointed by Trump last week to lead a Department of Government Efficiency agency with former Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy. However, many details remain to be worked out — the department doesn’t even exist yet.