The World Cup’s first score: Union 1, owners 0

In a 99-1 vote Wednesday night, food and beverage workers staffing Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium for the FIFA Men’s World Cup ratified an agreement that includes better wages and protections around immigration enforcement—a high-profile labor victory after months of dispute over poor pay and work without a contract amid huge employer revenues.

The workers include cooks, dishwashers, concession workers, bartenders, and servers at SoFi, which will host eight soccer matches in the coming weeks, and whose operator had previously ceased negotiations after multiple bargaining sessions failed to reach an agreement. After threatening a strike, the union workers won, among other things, contractual guarantees that allow them to walk off the job if federal immigration enforcement threatens worker safety during a match.

In an interview with The Athletic last week, Kurt Petersen, the president of the union representing the food and beverage workers, UNITE HERE Local 11, said the stadium operator was “not taking the concerns and demands seriously enough.”

But on Wednesday, workers ratified an agreement that the union said “won every major issue” it had brought to the table, including raises of at least 30 percent, a housing fund, job protections, AI and automation restrictions, privacy rights around personal data, and walkout rights in the event of ICE raids or similar federal action.

“This contract proves what workers can accomplish when we stand together,” Susana Lahargue, a union member, said in a statement. “We are proud to welcome fans knowing that workers have secured a contract that respects our work and our dignity.”

The union announced last week that the workers it represents had voted 96 percent in favor of authorizing a strike with just days to go until the first World Cup match—giving their employer every incentive to come back to the table.

As I wrote last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that “every single” federal law enforcement agency would be on site at the soccer tournament: “If we have people coming in that’s on the terrorist watchlist, we’re going to collapse on them. That’s not going to [just] be ICE, that could be state police that collapse on them. We’re all working together.”

Additionally, FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, is enforcing an accreditation process that involves collecting stadium workers’ personal data and sharing it with the Department of Homeland Security prior to the World Cup.

“We are seriously concerned that FIFA will hand over our most sensitive personal information and waive our rights under California law, or lose our job working the World Cup,” Yolanda Fierro, a stadium worker and union member, said in a May statement. “We cannot celebrate the World Cup while workers, tourists, immigrant families, and local communities are made to feel unsafe.”

Union members also raised concerns about the enormous revenues their employer, Legends Global, a worldwide venue management company, would earn from the World Cup, including from individual luxury suite packages worth more than $100,000. According to the union, workers—despite the high-pressure environment of the tournament and the immigration risks—aren’t seeing anything like a fair share: “Legends Global’s most recent proposal includes wage freezes for some suite attendants and bartenders and 25 cents-an-hour annual increases for cooks and dishwashers,” the local wrote.

Despite a tournament already marked by abuses of power— including the Trump administration’s denial of visas to national team players, staff, and match officials—roughly 2,000 food and beverage workers have scored the first goal.