Approximately 2,000 hospitality workers at SoFi Stadium will begin voting Thursday over whether to authorize a strike just a week before the World Cup is scheduled to kick off at the Inglewood venue.
The cooks, dishwashers, concession workers, bartenders and servers represented by Unite Here Local 11 have been working without a contract for a year and the union says negotiations with Legends Global, the stadium’s food-service operator, have stalled. Workers are demanding salary increases, protection against subcontracting and job loss through automation, and are protesting FIFA’s collection of sensitive private information such as nationality and home addresses.
If a strike is approved during the two-day vote, Kurt Petersen, co-president of the union, said the 70,000 fans arriving for the June 12 World Cup opener between the U.S. and Paraguay will be greeted by hundreds of picketing workers.
“It could get ugly, yes,” he said.
Petersen said another round of bargaining was scheduled for Wednesday but he was not hopeful a resolution would be reached. A union spokeswoman said the results of the vote could be known as early as Friday night.
“I think we’ll go through the vote and hopefully we’ll meet again next week,” he said. “We want a fair contract. But it takes two sides.”
In terms of salary, Petersen said the union is looking for “substantial increases” to more than $30 an hour. Legends’ most recent proposal calls for wage freezes for some workers and a 25-cent hourly increase for cooks and dishwashers, the union said.
“The company wants to talk about quarters. We want to talk about dollars,” Petersen said.
The union is seeking a 22-month contract that would expire just before the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
“Legends Global has enjoyed a strong relationship with Unite Here Local 11 for more than a decade and remains committed to reaching a fair agreement through good-faith negotiations,” company spokeswoman Stacey Escudero said. “We look forward to delivering an outstanding hospitality experience for fans at the FIFA World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium.”
Although FIFA, global soccer’s governing body and the organizer of the World Cup, is not a party in the labor talks, its influence looms large in the effort to get a deal, Petersen said. For the first time at a World Cup, FIFA will take control of all 16 stadiums during the tournament, including venue operations and concessions. So while Legends will be responsible for paying workers, their job functions, attire and the accreditation needed to access SoFi will be managed by FIFA.
The accreditation policy has become a major sticking point because FIFA is demanding sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers and fingerprints, among other things, to process background checks. Collecting that information requires the permission of the workers and Local 11 is refusing to waive California data privacy rights; instead it has joined the ACLU of Southern California and other groups in filing a formal complaint with the state Department of Justice that calls on California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate the matter.
The union fears the information could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.
“The contract dispute is between Legends Global and Unite Here Local 11 for a long-term contract for events at the venue and does not involve FIFA,” the organization, which was named in an NLRB complaint the union filed in April, said in a statement.
Of the background checks, FIFA said it was partnering with the governments of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, the three countries in which the 38-day tournament will be played, “to enhance safety and security of all workers, staff, team members, vendors, journalists, volunteers, and spectators by mitigating potential insider threats. … Such name checks do not constitute pre-employment checks. All data collected during the name-check process will be processed in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws, and will be deleted by FIFA as soon as it is no longer needed for purposes of adjudicating requests for credentialed access to FIFA-controlled spaces.”
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