US Women’s National Team Sued By US Soccer Federation

The U.S. Soccer Federation is suing the players’ union to “confirm the existence” of a collective bargaining agreement and head off a potential strike ahead of this summer’s Olympics. The Federation claims Richard Nichols, the executive director of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team Players Association, has refused to acknowledge the December 31, 2016, expiration date of the current agreement.

The USSF believes that a CBA agreed upon in 2005 and altered by a memorandum of understanding, has been in effect since 2013 and remains valid until December 2016.

U.S. Soccer, in its press release issued the day of the meeting said they had been forced to file suit when Nichols told them he did not believe there was an agreement in place, “a position that could allow the team to take labor actions after February 24”.

Sunil Gulati, president of USSF, publicly apologized for that game and vowed to increase efforts to prevent that situation from happening again. The move comes just six months before Team USA is scheduled to head to Brazil in search of a gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The New York Times reported that this CBA in question expired in 2012 and the USWNT have simply been operating under this CBA even though if that was the case, the players didn’t need to.

The USMNT do not play games on artificial turf and when they play games in stadiums with artificial turf, real grass is temporarily placed on top of the artificial turf for that game.

“Naturally we’re upset”, Rapinoe said.

To further complicate matters between the two, NWSL is strongly tied to USSF, alongside the CSA and FMF who provide allocated players outside the salary cap. That’s right – less than a year after the national team won the Women’s World Cup in front of an American television audience of 23 million, the team’s union is being sued by their soccer federation over the validity of the terms of their contract.

But tension between the USWNT and the federation ratcheted up another notch on Wednesday, when U.S. Soccer filed a lawsuit in federal court in Chicago. U.S. Soccer is trying to make sure a collective bargaining agreement that may or may not have expired four years ago is still valid until the end of this year. The top two teams will earn an Olympic berth, something the USA women are expected to do. With a 2015 Women’s World Cup trophy in hand and growing popularity among soccer fans across the country, the US women are looking for immediate redress for certain aspects of their working conditions that they find onerous.

The implications include a possible strike and complications with the National Women’s Soccer League, which starts its season later this spring.