The people who run concessions at SoFi Stadium — the cooks, the dishwashers, the bartenders, the cashiers — voted 96 percent to strike a week before the World Cup rolled into town. Days later they had a tentative deal with Legends Hospitality. Quick, clean, almost civilized. Until you stop and ask why it took the single biggest event that building will ever host to get a few thousand people a contract they should have had already.
They didn’t get heard because someone in management woke up fair. They got heard because they happened to be standing on the one patch of ground a billion people were about to stare at. Nobody negotiates with a dishwasher. Everybody negotiates with a dishwasher who can turn the concourse dark on opening day. That’s the entire trick, and it’s the only card a service worker has left — the power to embarrass something expensive...