LA labor plans to use 2028 Olympics to push for housing, wages

As Los Angeles ramps up for the 2028 Olympics, labor unions are telling their members to look at the Games as a moment to extract new pay and benefits from employers and to push local policy changes. Unite Here Local 11 Co-President Kurt Petersen said his union is coordinating the expiration dates of more than 100 contracts that cover roughly 25,000 workers across hotels, airports, sports arenas and convention centers, with those agreements set to expire in January 2028. Other unions, including United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 and Service Employees International Union Local 721, are also looking to contracts that expire in the first half of 2028, aiming to maximize bargaining leverage during a period of high demand for hospitality and event-related work.

Petersen said the unions want workers to have leverage not only at the bargaining table but also on the ground if negotiations fail. He told reporters that, “We are going to have a force … of working people to do whatever it takes, including striking if we have to during the Olympics in 2028,” and added, “The Olympics can’t happen without the workers.” The union leader tied the strategy to lessons he said labor groups took from past mega-event disruptions, including actions around the Paris Olympics when workers at a hotel where International Olympic Committee members were staying staged a walkout shortly before the opening ceremonies.

The labor push extends beyond contracts to citywide demands associated with hosting the Olympics. A coalition of labor groups, community organizations and religious institutions is pressing LA28 and the city to pay for 50,000 housing units, to pass a moratorium on short-term rentals such as Airbnb, and to protect immigrant workers. The coalition’s message is that the economic activity tied to the Games should translate into housing supply and protections for workers who they say are essential to the event’s operation.

Academic researchers cited by the unions’ supporters say the Olympics can create leverage, though they also caution that many economic gains may fade. Jules Boykoff, a professor at Pacific University who has studied worker gains from past Olympics, called the Games a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” for organized labor, saying sports mega events highlight the roles of essential workers. Boykoff pointed to gains by transportation workers and garbage collectors ahead of the Paris Olympics as examples. Robert Baumann, a professor at the College of the Holy Cross who has examined data from several Games, said economic benefits tied to the Olympics tend to be short-lived, with tourism and hospitality seeing boosts while other industries may suffer from disruption in the host city.

Labor leaders also described what kinds of contract concessions can be achieved when workers act early and use the Games as timing leverage. Axel Persson, general secretary of the CGT Rail Workers Union in France, said on the Real News Network podcast that his organization won concessions ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, including earlier retirement with full pension and doubled pay for transportation workers during the Games. In Rio de Janeiro, the AP report said more than 2,000 workers went on strike at venue construction sites two years ahead of the 2016 Summer Olympics, and that the walkout helped produce higher pay and more workers’ lunch vouchers.

Alongside the labor strategy, Los Angeles has moved on at least one wage-related policy that unions say will affect hotel and tourism workers. The city recently approved a minimum wage of $30 per hour by July 2028 for workers at hotels with 60 or more rooms, with the increase phased in over the next few years. Workers’ current minimum wage is $22.50. Business groups have said the wage increase will hurt the city’s tourism industry, which they say never fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, and opponents are still trying to delay the wage hike until after the Summer Games.

Local unions say they are also pursuing additional ballot measures. Petersen said unions are collecting signatures for proposals that include one that would penalize corporations with CEOs who earn more than 100 times the company’s median employee pay. The unions’ signature drive also includes proposals that would require the public to vote on developing major event and hotel projects and that would expand the $30 minimum wage to all workers. Petersen said they want major-event profits to fund what the city and its residents need, saying, “We need to make the Olympics and the CEOs who are gonna make money off the Olympics pay for things that our city and citizens need.”

Business groups are responding by pushing a different agenda tied to the costs they say major events impose. Los Angeles-area chambers of commerce have used the Olympics fight to target a long-standing business frustration: the gross receipts tax. Business leaders proposed a ballot measure to repeal the tax shortly after the city council passed the hospitality worker minimum wage, and the report said the tax is levied on businesses’ total revenue before operating costs and accounts for more than $700 million in annual tax revenue, according to the city clerk’s office. The money, the report said, supports the city’s general fund, including police, firefighters, homeless assistance and other core services, and Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, said “Businesses continue to get hammered in this city.”

On the workers’ side, Thelma Cortez, a cook for the airline catering company Flying Food Group, said she is facing pressures from the cost of living and described her income going toward rent for her and her three daughters. She works overtime or side jobs to make ends meet, and she said she was excited to hear Los Angeles would host the 2028 Olympics because she expected more work and the possibility that airport and hotel workers could earn more.