Five Top Female Players Accuse U.S. Soccer of Wage Discrimination
Five
key members of the United States women’s national soccer team, the
reigning World Cup and Olympic champion, have filed a federal complaint
charging U.S. Soccer with wage discrimination.
In
the filing, the five players contend that the women’s team is the
driving economic force for U.S. Soccer, the governing body for the sport
in America, even as its players are paid far less than their
counterparts on the men’s national team, said their lawyer, Jeffrey
Kessler.
The
players involved in the complaint are among the most prominent and
decorated female athletes in the world: the co-captains Carli Lloyd and
Becky Sauerbrunn, forward Alex Morgan, midfielder Megan Rapinoe and
goalkeeper Hope Solo.
In their complaint — which was submitted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
the federal agency that enforces civil rights laws against workplace
discrimination, on Wednesday — the players requested an investigation of
U.S. Soccer. But in taking official action, they also thrust their team
into a debate roiling in several sports, notably professional tennis, about equal pay for men and women.
“We
have been quite patient over the years with the belief that the
federation would do the right thing and compensate us fairly,” Lloyd,
the most valuable player of last year’s Women’s World Cup, said in a
statement released by the players and Kessler.
Solo was more blunt in the statement, directly comparing the women’s achievements with those of the men’s national team.
“The
numbers speak for themselves,” Solo said. “We are the best in the
world, have three World Cup championships, four Olympic championships,
and the U.S.M.N.T. get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win
major championships.”
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Citing budget figures released last month by U.S. Soccer, Kessler said
the players contend that they earned as little as 40 percent of what
players on the United States men’s national team earned even as they
marched to the team’s third world championship last year, and that they
were shortchanged on everything from bonuses and appearance fees to per
diems.
“This is the strongest case of discrimination against women athletes in violation of law that I have ever seen,” Kessler said.
Though
only five players signed the complaint, they said they were acting on
behalf of the entire women’s team, saying they are all employees of U.S.
Soccer through their national team contracts.
The
filing of the complaint was the latest move in an increasingly
contentious legal fight between U.S. Soccer and the women’s national
team players, who are favored to repeat as Olympic champions at the Rio
Games in August.
“While
we have not seen this complaint and can’t comment on the specifics of
it,” U.S. Soccer said in a statement, “we are disappointed about this
action. We have been a world leader in women’s soccer and are proud of
the commitment we have made to building the women’s game in the United
States over the past 30 years.”
Women’s
national team players have long grumbled about their pay, working
conditions and travel and hotel arrangements, which the players contend
are inferior to those given to the men’s national team despite the
women’s far superior record. The men’s most notable achievement in the
past half-century was a quarterfinal appearance at the 2002 World Cup.
The
long-simmering feud between the women’s team and U.S. Soccer’s
leadership boiled over after last summer’s Women’s World Cup. A match in
Hawaii that was part of the team’s so-called victory tour was canceled
when the players refused to play on an artificial-turf field they deemed unsafe. U.S. Soccer’s president, Sunil Gulati, later apologized for the situation.
Two months later, the disagreement veered into federal court when U.S. Soccer took the unusual step of filing a lawsuit against the national team’s players’ union
as part of a dispute about the validity of the players’ collective
bargaining agreement. The federation contends the agreement, which
expired in 2012, lives on in a memorandum of understanding the sides
signed in early 2013. The union contends it does not.
Obama Honors U.S. Women’s Soccer Team
President Obama said the women’s 2015
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means being the best.“
By REUTERS on Publish Date October 27, 2015.
Photo by Zach Gibson/The New York Times.
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The
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will not deal with the larger
issues in that fight, or in the bargaining talks, because it does not
have jurisdiction, Kessler said. But by raising the issue of the
compensation of the men’s national team, the women’s players may risk
dividing the teams’ fan bases even as they put U.S. Soccer in a
difficult position. The federation has collective bargaining agreements
with both teams, but the financial terms differ widely.
The
women’s players are salaried employees — the top players are paid about
$72,000 a year by the federation — but they contend that even with that
extra income, their bonus structure means they earn far less than their
male counterparts, who receive money from U.S. Soccer only if they are
called to the national team.
A
men’s player, for example, receives $5,000 for a loss in a friendly
match but as much as $17,625 for a win against a top opponent. A women’s
player receives $1,350 for a similar match, but only if the United
States wins; women’s players receive no bonuses for losses or ties.
Yet
the women point to the television ratings for their matches and the
crowds they draw as evidence that the disparity in federation pay is
unfair.
The
men and the women “have identical work requirements,” Kessler said.
“The same number of minimum friendlies, the same requirements about
participating and making the World Cup teams — identical work.
“But
the women have without dispute vastly outperformed the men not just on
the playing field but economically for the U.S.S.F. The women have
generated all the money in comparison with the men.”
U.S.
Soccer is expected to argue that the players’ pay is collectively
bargained, and that the players agreed to all issues, including
compensation and working conditions like whether the team must play on
artificial turf or not. (The federation and the women’s players’ union
are continuing discussions on compensation in a new collective
bargaining agreement amid the current action.)
U.S.
Soccer also receives substantially higher payouts from FIFA, world
soccer’s governing body, for participation in the men’s World Cup. But
the women’s complaint seems to take aim at a bigger share of domestic
revenue, like sponsorships and television contracts.
Budget
figures provided by U.S. Soccer at its annual general meeting in
February showed a $20 million increase in national team revenue in 2015.
The women’s players attributed that to their World Cup triumph and the
subsequent multicity victory tour. U.S. Soccer is expecting another
windfall this year; among its budget projections for 2016 is $2.3
million for another victory tour after the Olympics.
It
is unclear how long it will take to resolve the complaint, but the
process will almost certainly hover over the women team’s preparations
for the Rio Games in August. If the E.E.O.C. rules for the players, it
could seek relief on behalf of the entire women’s national team in the
form of a negotiated settlement or side with the players in federal
court, Kessler said. If the case is successful, it could force U.S.
Soccer to surrender millions of dollars in back pay.
Opportunities
for women to participate in sports have increased greatly in the more
than 40 years since the passage of the gender-equity legislation known
as Title IX. But financial parity has often lagged behind.
The
N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, which began in 1939, pays about
$260,000 to a conference for each game a team plays in the tournament,
the sports economist Andrew Zimbalist wrote recently in The New York
Times. The winning team rakes in $1.56 million for its conference. By
contrast, the N.C.A.A women’s tournament, which began in 1982, awards
zero dollars for winning a game.
It
could be argued that men’s sports deserve a financial edge because they
are more popular, draw bigger crowds, generate far more money in ticket
sales and corporate sponsorships. But that is not true for every sport.
Women’s figure skating, for instance, has often drawn higher television
ratings and bigger crowds than men’s figure skating.
And
while women have often been dismissed internationally as soccer players
— the men’s World Cup began in 1930 and the women’s not until 1991 —
they have become the sport’s standard bearers in the United States.
It
is the women’s team that has provided repeated success that has
remained elusive for the American men. Not so long ago, perhaps the best
known soccer player in the country was not a man but a woman, Mia Hamm.
Even today, the United States is perceived by many around the world to
be a predominantly female soccer culture.
When
Hamm and her teammates won the 1999 World Cup in the United States,
they set records for attendance and television viewing. Last summer,
when the United States defeated Japan to win another Women’s World Cup,
the final was seen by 25.4 million viewers on Fox — a record for a men’s
or women’s soccer game on English-language television in this country.
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