Universal Studios Hollywood Employees Want ICE Protections in Their Next Union Contract
As thousands of Los Angeles residents have been swept up in Trump’s immigration raids, Hollywood’s studios have remained silent. But two unions are trying to get one of those studios to speak out through their latest contract negotiations.
Those unions are Unite Here 11 and IATSE B-192, which represent the theme park employees at Universal Studios Hollywood. The unions have been in talks for a new contract since November and last week escalated its organizing efforts with a rally at Universal CityWalk demanding that the company agree to contract language that would ensure that ICE and other immigration officials are not voluntarily allowed onto the premises of the park or studio backlot without a signed judicial warrant.
It’s unlikely that ICE would ever make a move on a theme park. Since the Trump Administration first sent them to Los Angeles last summer, car washes, public parks, grocery and hardware stores, private residences, and even just the streets themselves have been the most likely targets for immigration raids.
But Unite Here 11 spokesperson Victoria Stahl said that the union took notice when ICE agents attempted to access the parking lots of Dodger Stadium last June and were turned away by the baseball team.
They’ve also taken note that the Trump Administration has promised ICE and Department of Homeland Security presence in cities like Los Angeles that will host the FIFA World Cup this summer. Even before the killings this past January in Minneapolis, a Colombian asylum seeker who was attending last summer’s FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey with his family was detained and sent back to his country of origin after he attempted to use a small drone to take a picture with his family.
“You hear so often in the news about how people are afraid to come to the U.S. because of what they are seeing and reading about ICE,” Stahl said. “Universal Studios is expecting to get international visitors during the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics. They are part of a company that has TV rights to those events. We feel as a union that it is important that the company make a public statement and show that the parks will be a safe place for both their workers and their guests.”
For this contract cycle, Unite Here and IATSE are looking for defined protocols and protections for any instance in which ICE may appear at USH, CityWalk or in the adjacent parking lots, including language ensuring that an employee would not be disciplined for not showing up to work because of ICE presence. Supervisors and managers would also receive training in what to do if they encounter immigration officials, similar to the “know your rights” trainings that are held by groups like the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.
“We’ve asked the company to give us actual policies that they have for these situations, and we haven’t been able to find any,” said IATSE B-192 president Nicole Miller. “They haven’t provided them for us, so we suspect that they don’t exist. But we’re still waiting for that confirmation.”
This is not the first time that Unite Here and IATSE have worked together. In 2023, amidst the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the two unions, along with other theme park unions like LiUNA, which represents the parks’ janitors and laborers, and the American Guild of Variety Artists, which represents the performers for live acts at the parks like the “Waterworld” stunt show.
In prior contract cycles, those unions tended to negotiate apart from each other. But with Los Angeles living costs rising rapidly and many employees having to live farther and farther from the Cahuenga Pass to find an affordable place to live, the unions started holding solidarity rallies that attracted the attention of writers, actors and hotel workers who were on strike that summer. Those actions became key to getting major concessions on wage increases for park employees.
Also included in the proposals from IATSE are rules that would ensure that an employee who is involuntarily detained by immigration officials and later released would keep their job with full pay during their absence. Further, if an employee must become the caretaker of a minor because the child’s parent or guardian is detained, the employee would be entitled to paid leave through the California Family and Medical Leave Act.
And on the public-facing side, IATSE and Unite Here 11 are pushing for Universal Studios to release a statement condemning the use of “violence, militarized tactics, or intimidation” by ICE and stating its “opposition to mass deportation policies and practices that destabilize communities, endanger workers, and undermine public safety in public-facing workplaces.”
It would be the sort of public stance that Hollywood has declined to take as it too has remained in the Trump Administration’s crosshairs, whether from the FCC’s investigation of studios’ DEI programs or threats to revoke broadcasting licenses over shows like “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” or from its involvement in industry upheaving merger battles like the one over Warner Bros. Discovery.
When speaking to TheWrap last year, Alex Aguilar, business manager for LiUNA 724, lamented the repeated refusals he received from studios as he pleaded for them to speak out amidst last summer’s ICE raids and street faceoffs between protestors and the LAPD. An estimated 70% of LiUNA 724’s members are Latino, and while they are all documented, Trump’s hardline actions have caused fears of racial profiling to spike.
“You go to a studio commissary, and the vast majority are Latinos. Among them, many are immigrants who came out here and have been working in those commissaries for decades,” he said. “Laborers, electricians, grips, painters, plasters, carpenters … so many of those people that build the soundstages and the sets are immigrants, and they need people to stand up for them.”
After Unite Here and IATSE, LiUNA 724 is next up to negotiate a new union contract with Universal Studios Hollywood later this spring, and the laborers union is planning to speak with their counterparts about the proposals they have put forth. Those proposals, particularly those supporting union members who have loved ones who are detained, will be of particular interest to LiUNA as the union has received calls from members seeking help for undocumented relatives.
TheWrap has reached out to Universal Parks and Experiences for comment and will update with any response.
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