LA28 Faces Escalating Labor Campaign Over Olympic Jobs and Housing

Southern California labor unions and civic organizations are escalating a campaign aimed at the leadership of the LA28 Olympic organizing committee. Activists are targeting high-profile board members while seeking binding economic and housing protections before Los Angeles hosts a decade of major global sporting events, including the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games and FIFA World Cup matches.

The Fair Games Coalition, coordinated through the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), includes more than 80 organizations and labor unions across Southern California. Its institutional partners include United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 770, the United Farm Workers (UFW), and hospitality union Unite Here Local 11.

“We launched the campaign with some real, reasonable demands,” said Jessica Durrum, director of the Fair Games Coalition at LAANE. “If the Olympics are coming to town, we want to make sure there are lasting benefits for our communities.”

The coalition is seeking enforceable commitments to union representation and living-wage jobs at all event venues and affiliated hospitality sites. Its platform also calls for dedicated public and private funding to build 50,000 housing units for working families, a municipal moratorium on short-term residential rentals to curb housing speculation and prevent displacement, and explicit workplace and legal protections for immigrant service workers.

Demonstrators brought those demands to South Los Angeles during a private opening celebration at the newly built Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Exposition Park. Their attention centered on museum co-founder Mellody Hobson, who resigned earlier in the week from the 35-member LA28 Board of Directors, the body responsible for planning and executing the 2028 Games.

Dozens of union members and community organizers, organized under the Fair Games Coalition banner, wore Jedi robes and Jar Jar Binks masks. They wielded lightsabers, blew horns, banged drums, and chanted “Sí se puede” across from the museum complex. The group argued that Hobson left her Olympic governance position to avoid engaging with labor representatives about community standards.

Hobson co-founded the $1 billion narrative art museum with her husband, filmmaker George Lucas. Statements about her departure attributed it to the operational demands of opening the new museum. Neither LA28 nor representatives for the Lucas Museum immediately responded to requests for comment about the demonstration or the coalition’s assertions.

The LA28 board is chaired by sports and entertainment executive Casey Wasserman. He has recently faced public scrutiny over past personal and professional connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

“That’s how you hide your head in the sand. But we’re not giving up,” said the Rev. Gary Bernard Williams of St. Mark United Methodist Church, a coalition member who attended the demonstration. “She still has clout and still has a lot of power in the city of Los Angeles with the Olympic Committee. There’s going to be a lot of money flowing at the top. Very little money will be trickling down to the workers who need it the most.”

The campaign is unfolding amid severe housing affordability pressures in Greater Los Angeles, where rising rents have pushed service workers farther from the city center. Gladys Avyla, a Unite Here Local 11 member who has spent 14 years working as a room cleaner at the W Hotel in Hollywood, said rent increases forced her to move to Victorville, roughly 85 miles northeast in the High Desert of San Bernardino County.

“Rent is very high, and everything is expensive. It’s hard living here. We need a wage increase for the Olympics because everything costs so much,” Avyla said in Spanish. “We need help for all workers. We’re human beings, but, honestly, we aren’t treated like human beings.”

Unite Here Local 11 has also represented concession staff, dishwashers, servers, and bartenders in negotiations connected to major sports infrastructure. Before FIFA World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, the union reached a tentative labor agreement with Legends Global, the stadium’s primary food-service operator, just days before competition began.

Pastor Bridie Roberts, community organizing director for Unite Here Local 11, said collective mobilization is vital to securing long-term economic gains from major events. “Our members face serious, critical decisions every single day about how to make ends meet and they work with some of the biggest tourism companies in the world that will profit in the billions off these games,” Roberts said. “We feel that the games have potential to bring real outcomes for working people, but only if we fight for them.”

Exposition Park, where the protest took place, is a 260-acre civic space south of Downtown Los Angeles. It contains the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and is scheduled to become a primary track-and-field venue for the 2028 Games. The Coliseum will also co-host the opening ceremony with SoFi Stadium.

The Lucas Museum adds a major cultural presence to the park alongside the California Science Center, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and BMO Stadium. Designed by MAD Architects, the multi-story facility contains extensive exhibition spaces devoted to visual storytelling, comic art, and cinematic history.

The 2028 Summer Olympic Games are scheduled for July 14 through July 30, 2028. The Paralympic Games are scheduled for August 15 through August 27. Los Angeles will become the third city in history to host the Summer Games three times, joining London and Paris.

Organizers have pledged a “no-build” Games model using existing stadiums and private funding. Regional labor leaders, however, contend that local leadership must guarantee civic infrastructure, housing, and wage standards before the international events arrive.