What happens when Seattle is put on the world stage to host an international soccer tournament?

That was the question looming for many Washingtonians in the tense weeks leading up to the cup. Here at Working Washington, workers told us that along with the excitement, they feared what the games would bring to our workplaces and communities. We knew that ICE continued to threaten our communities and would likely take advantage of events surrounding the tournament and fan celebrations. We also knew that worker exploitation would ramp up because workers continue to bear the impact of a billionaire economy that is driving the cost of living through the roof. Workers were faced with impossible choices, forced to choose between putting food on the table and risking their livelihoods. At Working Washington, we refused to wait for the harm to come.

The opportunity to organize together as workers 

As working people prepared to welcome fans to our state, doing everything from cooking meals, delivering orders, cleaning hotel rooms, and providing security, we also joined together to demand ICE out of the cup and to reclaim the game for Washington’s working class.

Our demands:

• We insisted that the tournament put workers first and refused to allow the tournament’s only legacy to be a corporate spectacle that siphoned money from our communities and generated publicity that covered up the mistreatment of workers and the targeting of immigrants.

• We organized to pressure elected leaders and tournament officials with our demand of No ICE in the Cup! to ensure everyone, including immigrants and visitors, could celebrate the beautiful game with dignity, safety, and without fear of being targeted by ICE.

How we mobilized together 

From May Day to Match Day, workers across industries, including restaurant workers, app-based workers, farmworkers, and domestic workers, learned how to prepare our workplaces and built plans to protect coworkers, customers, and neighbors if ICE shows up at work.

We did this in the following ways:

• We learned about our 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure and how those protections apply in our workplaces.

• We canvassed workplaces across the city to talk to other workers about making a real plan to keep each other safe and ensure we get what we’re owed.

• We joined mass calls and worker committee meetings to discuss what is happening in our workplaces and how to prevent being exploited at work, especially during busy events like the tournament celebrations.

• We trained one another on how to document if a boss retaliates because we stand up for our rights and safety at work.

• Even more importantly, we learned and strategized about how to organize with coworkers to fight back if an unfair boss tries to cheat us, puts our safety at risk, or violates our rights.

• We created joyful spaces for workers across the state to come together and build community with each other. Fear is the tool they use to isolate us, and we refuse to let fear keep us from building solidarity.

What we were up against

Officials involved with the tournament and politicians alike claimed there would be fair play, but given the history of past abuses around the tournament, workers knew to be wary. The corporate machine behind the tournament largely tried to have it be business as usual, with them calling the shots about who got to benefit (corporations and their billionaire owners) and what the experience would be like.

Mega corporations got special treatment over local businesses, teams were made to play at a disadvantage or had the rules bent in their favor to appease people in power, and officials caved to racist demands to prevent some people from doing their job at all. They tried to define who and what belonged, but workers in Washington were ready to reclaim the beautiful game.

The billionaire class, their corporations, and anti-worker and anti-immigrant politician allies want workers to face wage theft, retaliation, unsafe conditions, and abuses by ICE alone, as if it were a private problem. That allows them to keep workers isolated and stuck in survival mode. It also lets them pit some workers against others.

The result is sapping workers’ focus and energy from what’s really going on and how we can change things for the better.  These tactics allow corporations to siphon more of the wealth workers create and try to gut the public programs that benefit working families so they can sell us a privatized version to extract even more from us. They wanted to deploy the same tactic during the World Cup, but workers weren’t having it.

People power gets the win, on and off the pitch 

We celebrated through all the hard work too. Watch parties and a community soccer match brought workers together to celebrate the beautiful game and our cultures, build community, and share important resources. Building worker power takes more than workshops and plans; at the end of the day, it also means helping people find each other and take action together. The lesson workers carried from the World Cup was a simple but powerful one: worker power changes everything, and none of us can win alone.

Did you experience workplace violations during the World Cup? Join our movement of working-class people learning what our rights are and how to demand them together. Plus, when you add your voice to our working-class collective, we are able to score some really big wins. (Don’t believe us? Check out how workers organized to win the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights.)