On June 9, workers at SoFi Stadium represented by UNITE HERE Local 11 celebrate winning a new contract with stadium operators Legends Global that includes major raises and labor protections.Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty
“I see the federal agents walking. I had one of those ‘Kick ICE out’ buttons, and he looked at me, and he looked at it again. I said, would you like one? I have some extra buttons…He just looked at me and walked off.”
Yolanda recounted that story to me on Tuesday. She has been a luxury suite runner at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, a venue for the FIFA Men’s World Cup, since 2021. It’s been just over a month since roughly 2,000 food and beverage workers at the stadium won and ratified an agreement that includes large raises and labor protections including the right to stop work if immigration officers threaten employee safety.
The “Kick ICE Out” buttons were important to Yolanda, who saw federal agents patrolling the stadium and surrounding area—and kicking many vendors out of the parking lot—alongside local police, the county sheriff, state troopers, and private security from at least three firms, including off-duty cops.
Months before the first World Cup match, officials from FIFA, the international soccer governing body, required workers at World Cup stadiums to provide extensive personal information for work accreditation.
“It was a little disturbing,” Cesar, a bartender at SoFi for about five years, said to me. “We were worried [about] what they could do with our information”—which included driver’s licenses, social security numbers, worker permit numbers, and home addresses—”but all the workers wanted to work.”
FIFA’s relationship with the federal government, and especially the Department of Homeland Security, raised the prospect of that information making its way to immigration agents. Kurt Petersen, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents the workers at SoFi, told Mother Jones that FIFA’s contract permits it to share worker information with intelligence and law enforcement agencies—and that many workers had already provided their personal information before the union understood how the accreditation process worked.
The workers’ new contract prevents any similar requirement from being imposed again—such as when Los Angeles hosts the Olympics and Paralympics in 2028.
And the new contract bars the firm that employs the SoFi workers, as well as the stadium’s billionaire owner Stan Kroenke, from subcontracting work away from them.
The agreement has improved Cesar’s pay to reflect the hectic shifts on World Cup match days; and the workers hope similar wins will follow for American football— SoFi is the home venue for the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers—and the 2028 Olympics.
Like more than 100 other stadium, airport, and hotel concessions contracts, this one expires just before the 2028 Summer Olympics—when the prospect of a strike is again the last thing stadiums want.
