Developers of the Wilshire Grand Hotel reconstruction project have reached two labor agreements that could help secure the plan’s approval at a key Thursday hearing.

Thomas Properties Group and Korean Air unveiled the deals during a press conference Wednesday morning at the downtown hotel on Wilshire Boulevard.

One deal involves a project labor agreement with the Building and Trades Council of Los Angeles and Orange Counties in which construction workers would be hired from union halls. The other agreement is with UNITE-HERE Local 11 and requires that future hotel workers be union employees when the hotel reopens after its reconstruction, perhaps as early as 2016. The hotel is currently still in operation until December next year.

The agreement also includes a $10 million to provide about 480 existing hotel employees with severance pay, healthcare benefits and recall rights when the new hotel opens.

“One of the major issues that had to be confronted is, what do you with the existing employees?” said Thomas Property Group’s chief executive Jim Thomas. “This is a landmark.”

With the union buy-in, the agreements should help cushion the 2.5 million square foot project as it moves through the Planning Department, which is scheduled to consider the project Thursday. Nonetheless, opposition could come from non-union contractors as well as nearby businesses and building tenants.

The developers want to build a 65-story office building and 100 condominiums on top of a 45-story, 560-room luxury hotel. Also planned is a six-story building with ballroom, meeting room and restaurant space. Proponents estimate the development will create 7,000 on-site construction jobs and an additional 5,000 construction-related jobs.