A coalition of more than 100 Los Angeles labor unions, faith leaders and community groups has written to the International Olympic Committee demanding that federal immigration agents be kept away from the 2028 Summer Games, along with an end to the IOC's sponsorship partnership with Airbnb. The letter, addressed to IOC President Kirsty Coventry, also calls for union jobs paying a living wage and funding for 50,000 units of housing for working families ahead of the Games set to open at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
What the Coalition Is Asking For
The letter was first detailed by The Athletic, whose reporting describes unions demanding a block on immigration enforcement at the Games alongside the call to sever the IOC's Airbnb partnership. The group argues that Olympic Games have often brought human-rights abuses, corruption, labor exploitation, militarization and cost overruns, and it criticizes LA28 leadership for staying silent on protecting residents, fans and athletes. The coalition says it has raised these concerns for four years without a substantive response or concrete action from LA28.
Fueling the urgency is a claim in the letter that federal security planning involving the Department of Homeland Security will increase the federal presence in Southern California by summer 2028. The coalition is pushing for measures with the U.S. government to prevent immigration enforcement around Olympic venues and events — a request that echoes earlier organizing. Stadium workers in December delivered hundreds of petition signatures urging Crypto.com Arena to press LA28 and the IOC to keep federal immigration agents out of Olympic venues, according to the Los Angeles Times.
A Union With Leverage at the Stadiums
UNITE HERE Local 11, which represents thousands of workers at sports venues across Los Angeles, has already built some of these protections into its contracts. The union secured a clause in its SoFi Stadium labor agreement — which expires April 30, 2028 — allowing workers to leave the job if they reasonably believe federal agents present a safety threat, and it separately secured a 40 percent pay increase for concession-stand attendants at the stadium. On its Fair Games campaign page, the union states that its broader collective bargaining agreements give workers a contractual right to refuse unsafe work if ICE or Border Patrol agents show up on an employer's property, and the union says it represents 32,000 hospitality workers across Southern California and Arizona.
The coalition itself describes its membership as comprised of more than 60 organizations, per its Fair Games page, while the Times' broader count of the letter's signatories — more than 100 labor unions, faith leaders and community groups — reflects the wider alliance behind the demands. Among the asks listed on that page are funding for 50,000 units of housing and a moratorium on short-term rentals, the same housing target reflected in the letter to Coventry.
Airbnb and Delta Singled Out by Name
The letter specifically criticizes IOC sponsor Airbnb and LA28 founding partner Delta Air Lines. The coalition claims Airbnb has spent millions weakening local short-term-rental laws in order to shift affordable housing stock toward tourist rentals, and notes that Airbnb spent more than $6 million supporting groups backing candidates in Los Angeles's mayoral and city attorney races, as reported by LAist — races in which both Mayor Karen Bass and city attorney candidate John McKinney came up short. For its part, Airbnb has told investors it expects the Olympics to spur rapid and lasting expansion of its home-sharing business in Los Angeles, according to POLITICO. Airbnb has said it expects to make the Games an economic opportunity for Angelenos, that it wants local leaders to help families and businesses earn extra cash during the Games, and that lodging demand is expected to exceed capacity — adding that entire-home listings booked more than 90 nights a year account for just 0.23 percent of Los Angeles metro housing units.
Research outside this dispute offers some context for why short-term rentals are such a flashpoint. A 2022 report from McGill University's Urban Politics and Governance research group estimated that the average Los Angeles renter household was paying an extra $810 a year because of short-term rentals, with cumulative costs reaching $3,440 since 2015. Roughly 2,500 Los Angeles homes were taken off the long-term market. The report also estimated that 45 percent of the city's short-term-rental listings were illegal that August, and that the top 10 percent of hosts earned 53.8 percent of all host revenue in the city during that period.
The Fight Over Delta and the Olympic Wage Ordinance
The coalition also claims Delta was among the largest funders of an effort to overturn Los Angeles's Olympic wage program, which provides higher wages and health benefits for tourism workers. The City Council had approved a plan for covered hotel and airport workers to reach $30 an hour in time for the Olympics, but the council later delayed that implementation until 2030. According to MyNewsLA, the council finalized changes to the Olympic Wage Ordinance in an 11-3 vote, setting covered workers on a path to $25 an hour starting July 1, 2027, then $27.50 by July 2028, $29 by July 2029, and finally $30 by July 1, 2030 — well past the original target tied to the Games themselves.
That delay followed a ballot fight. The Los Angeles Times reported that a coalition of airline and hotel businesses had gathered enough signatures to qualify a measure for the Nov. 3 ballot that would have repealed the city's gross receipts tax, and that backers — including Delta, United Airlines and hotel trade groups — indicated they would abandon that campaign if the council halted or delayed the $30 hourly minimum. UNITE HERE Local 11 sent a letter to the city attorney's office in May alleging that travel companies, including Delta, had influenced the wage decision. A Delta spokesperson said the airline supported the revised ordinance the council passed that month, and noted Delta paid $1.3 billion in profit sharing to employees nationwide in February, including $84 million to roughly 6,000 employees in California.
A Delegation Headed for Lausanne
The coalition says it plans to send a delegation to IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, next month, made up of hotel, airport and event-center workers, teachers, immigrant-rights activists, fair-housing advocates and interfaith clergy. The group is requesting an opportunity to present its vision at the IOC Executive Board meeting, scheduled for December 13, and at the Olympic Summit two days later on December 15, both in Lausanne. The coalition has warned that working people are prepared to do whatever it takes to win what it calls a fair Games.
This isn't the first time labor groups have pressed the city and LA28 on these issues. A rally at the Coliseum last year saw labor groups push for what they called a New Deal ahead of the 2028 Olympics, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time. The IOC has acknowledged receipt of the coalition's latest letter, with a spokesperson saying the Olympics and Paralympics should bring lasting benefits for hosts, while also stating that the issues raised principally concern local policies and decisions outside the IOC's direct remit. LA28, which organizes the Games locally, was approached for comment.
