LOS ANGELES \u2014 As Los Angeles ramps up for the 2028 Olympics, local unions are drawing inspiration from the Paris Games when hotel workers went on strike a day before opening ceremonies.<\/p>\n
The French workers waved signs at the five-star hotel where members of the International Olympic Committee were staying, threatening \u201cNo Olympics!\u201d if their demands were not met. A slew of labor union strikes surrounding those Games netted gains from higher salaries to better retirement benefits.<\/p>\n
LA labor leaders representing tens of thousands of workers across Southern California hope to employ similar strategies as the city prepares to host the Summer Games in 2028.<\/p>\n
Unite Here Local 11 co-President Kurt Petersen said his union has aligned more than 100 contracts that cover roughly 25,000 workers at hotels, airports, sports arenas and convention centers to expire in January 2028, mere months before the opening ceremony. The idea is to maximize bargaining power.<\/p>\n
United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, which represents workers in the health care, grocery and packing industries; and Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents more than 100,000 county employees, also plan to leverage contracts that expire in the first half of 2028.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d Petersen said. \u201cThe Olympics can\u2019t happen without the workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
A coalition of labor groups, community organizations and religious institutions are pushing for the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee \u2014 known as LA28 \u2014 and the city to pay for building 50,000 housing units, pass a moratorium on short-term rentals like Airbnb, and protect immigrant workers.<\/p>\n
Jules Boykoff, a professor at Pacific University who has studied worker gains from past Olympics, called the Games a \u201conce-in-a-generation opportunity\u201d for organized labor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese sports mega events are yet another social moment that helps us see with greater clarity, people who\u2019ve been there working all along, who actually are essential workers,\u201d Boykoff said.<\/p>\n
He pointed to wins by transportation workers and garbage collectors ahead of the Paris Games as examples.<\/p>\n
Most of the economic benefits tied to the Olympics are short-lived, according to Robert Baumann, a professor at College of the Holy Cross who has examined data from several Games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 As Los Angeles ramps up for the 2028 Olympics, local unions are drawing inspiration from…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[238289,5377,64,34716,1582,276,79,34711,263,34717,2961,606,119984,34713,174289,174291,224,5337,174290,174288,27617,174293,238287,38162,238288,8066],"class_list":{"0":"post-539633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-2028-summer-olympics","9":"tag-advocacy","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-business-ethics","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-california","14":"tag-economy","15":"tag-employee-relations","16":"tag-employment","17":"tag-industrial-relations","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-labor","20":"tag-labor-disputes","21":"tag-labor-relations","22":"tag-labor-related-organizations","23":"tag-labour-movement","24":"tag-los-angeles","25":"tag-losangeles","26":"tag-occupational-organizations","27":"tag-organizational-conflict","28":"tag-sociology-of-work","29":"tag-strike-action","30":"tag-trade-union","31":"tag-trade-unions","32":"tag-unite-here","33":"tag-work"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115950543700280562","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}