Unite Here needs to unite, here, to make World Cup a success

Unions are running LA into the ground. Of course workers have the right to organize, and to protect their members from poor conditions and bad management.But right now, they are choking LA.The Hollywood strikes that caused the studios to move production. The teachers’ union that keeps our schools in a dismal state. The health care workers’ union that put a so-called “billionaire tax” on the ballot, which has already caused an estimated trillion dollars in wealth to leave the state.Now, the latest union assault on LA’s prosperity is the vote by Unite Here Local 11 to strike at SoFi Stadium, ahead of the opening match for Team USA on Friday.Could anything be more selfish? Could anything be less patriotic?The union, which spent piles of cash on the recent primary elections, wants to exploit the World Cup to flex its political muscle. It’s top demand has nothing to do with its contract with the stadium, or with FIFA, but is rather just a complaint about immigration enforcement.The union wants employees to be able to walk off the job if U.S.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is operating at the venue.That’s an insane demand.

Essentially, the union wants illegal immigrants to be able to work at SoFi — jobs Americans, want and deserve. The unions also wants its members to be able to skip work virtually at will, whenever they decide that ICE is some kind of threat.There’s no getting around the fact that the World Cup will have law enforcement, including immigration enforcement, at SoFI and other stadiums — as is the norm for international events, anywhere in the world. We cannot allow the World Cup to provide cover for transnational criminals who would take advantage of the games to smuggle drugs — and people.The union risks throwing the U.S.home opener — and the World Cup — into chaos. The damage to LA’s reputation will be immeasurable.

You might as well hang a sign on the city: “Investors not wanted.” The irony is that the ...