AAs the WNBA's biggest stars prepared for the All-Star Game on July 19, the message came through loud and clear. Everyone was wearing shirts with the words “Pay Us What You Owe Us” written on them and the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBPA) logo prominently displayed below. visual immediately went viral, drawing attention to the union continuous negotiations with the league on a new collective agreement.
If the messaging started and ended with these shirts, it would be noticeable but limited in scope. Instead, the ongoing campaign was just one example of how two of the most prominent women's players' unions in the United States worked together to advance their interests.
“When you're fighting for something historic, something that's never been done before, it can't happen in a vacuum,” said Erin Drake, senior counsel and legal counsel for the WNBPA, who was enrolled for a shirt campaign that aimed to reach as many people and organizations as possible.
To that end, by the end of the All-Star Game, the jerseys were made available for purchase online, and the WNBPA's fellow football players soon became buyers.
“Most of our employees have already gone to the website and purchased the jerseys themselves,” said Tori Huster, deputy executive director of the National Women's Soccer League Players Association (NWSLPA), adding that there has been an influx of requests from players. The two unions got to talking, and soon after, the NWSLPA asked its members to indicate whether they wanted to be sent a T-shirt that read, “Pay Them What You Owe Them.”
“It was a quick yes,” Haley Hopkins, president of the NWSLPA, said of her teammates at the Kansas City Current. There were no top-down directives on when to wear the jerseys, so the players decided to make their announcement before the team's home game against the Washington Spirit on Sept. 13.
NWSLPA hastened strengthen images of those players, even though broadcast partners The Current and NWSL did not (The Current did not respond to the Guardian when asked why the players were not featured. Their post was a joint post with the ION NWSL Instagram account, and Scripps, which owns ION, also did not provide a reason when asked).
“It’s not just female athletes in Western Europe who are experiencing this,” Hopkins said. “This is a message that should be sent to virtually every female athlete in the United States, no matter what league she is in, that we deserve to be paid.”
Except, No speaking out on this issue would be a departure from the way union relations have developed. grew up.
“We're always in constant support of each other. Wearing the T-shirts was just an expression of that relationship,” Hopkins said.
In many ways, the WNBPA, founded in 1998, has become a model for the NWSLPA, which emerged in 2017. WNBA players have legendary reputations. history of activismspeaking out against racist systems, police violence, discrimination against transgender people and other issues. “Their collective action, their advocacy, has certainly been a shining example of what we aspire to be,” Huster said.
When the NWSLPA was in its infancy, its leaders “Googled what unions were,” Huster said. Megan Burke, the organization's executive director, was initially its only full-time employee. At the time, her relationship with WNBPA colleague Terry Carmichael Jackson was the main channel of union communication. There are more people on both teams now, especially Huster and Drake.
“There’s probably not a month that goes by that Erin and I don’t talk about something,” Huster said.
Early asymmetry gave way to solidarity. “Over time, as our union grew stronger,” Burke said, “it became a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity.”
These are relationships that have manifested themselves in joint public actions. In 2022, when the NWSLPA took over joint investigation Because the NWSL was subject to league abuse, Jackson served on the oversight committee along with Burke and others. “Terry played a very important role for us in correcting the course of the league and creating a new standard for player safety in the NWSL,” Burke said. In December 2024, when Chicago Sky and Stars players, as well as Burke, testified During the hearings on House Bill 5841 in Illinois, there was cooperation between unions to organize this speech. Behind the scenes, unions worked together to organize educational programs for players in both leagues.
Solidarity is the ethos as well as the strategy of trade unions. Unions believe that workers are stronger together in the face of corporate interests – why shouldn't this logic extend to solidarity between unions themselves?
“It's a tactic of division. It's a tactic of feeling isolated where you're trying to assert your value and value,” Drake said, adding that both the WNBPA and NWSLPA reject the tactic.
Solidarity, of course, does not mean that trade unions work in complete synchronization. But they have more than enough in common to make collaboration worthwhile.
“Our focus on issues affecting workers is certainly informed by our experiences as women,” Burke said. Both unions are driven by shared priorities, such as ensuring protections for mothers, tackling underinvestment, and ensuring healthy working conditions and fair pay.
Another common feature is the relative youth of the unions compared to their counterparts in the NBA (1954), NFL (1956), MLB (1966) and NHL (1967).
“Any time you have a new league, a new league, it becomes more challenging, and by definition the union will generally have less power and a tougher time,” said Nellie Drew, a sports law professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law. “[That] That’s why it’s especially important now that these two unions cooperate and help each other.”
after promoting the newsletter
As working relationships between organizations grow, so does their importance in the current political climate of the United States. Trade unions released joint statement opposition to federal immigration raids earlier this year is the result of WNBPA members asking their union to speak out.
Allow content from Instagram?
This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before downloading anything as they may use cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click “Allow and continue”.
“All of our statements — all of them — come from our player leadership,” Drake said. She added: “It became clear from conversations that NWSLPA members were making similar observations.” As such, the WNBPA invited the NWSLPA to participate in the statement. The NWSLPA, which has a significant international membership and a deep understanding of the global nature of football, has joined.
The unions' connection to national politics also comes through their membership in the AFL-CIO Athletic Council, a group of players' unions in the largest federation of unions in the United States. This organization recently brought union attention to a big issue: the Student Compensation and Equity Sharing (Grades) Opportunity Act.
Burke told the Guardian that all the unions on the council were concerned that the federal bill would “prevent workers from unionizing and would create an antitrust exemption for the NCAA.”
But the WNBPA and NWSLPA were also concerned about the impact of the Scores Act on Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibited sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Title IX was not mentioned in the bill, which aims to codify name, likeness and image (NIL) policies, opening the possibility that gender discrimination could occur in federally funded schools with sponsorship money on the books.
In July, the Women's Democratic Caucus sent letter members of Congress associated with the bill, and a couple of months later, Burke and Drake spoke about the issue at a congressional briefing organized by the caucus. “For this briefing, NWSLPA came to us and asked us to participate, and it was a no-brainer because at the end of the day, no matter what the text of the proposed SCORE legislation says, Title IX is not addressed in the bill,” Drake told the Guardian, “and that, frankly, is the death blow for all of us because we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Title IX.”
The T-shirts may have made headlines, but both unions know the attention ultimately serves a larger purpose – improving conditions in their CBA.
“We see the NWSLPA supporting the WNBPA during this contract fight because they know what it means to fight for respect at work, for fair pay and for a share in the enormous profits their labor generates,” said Liz Schuler, AFL-CIO President.
Indeed, leaders of both unions said that union CBAs are always in dialogue. “I'm confident that the WNBPA is looking at our last CBA and some of the provisions that we made … and trying to improve them,” Burke said, a sentiment echoed by Drake. “And likewise, whatever wins they can achieve in their next CBA, we will take that into account when we negotiate next.”
Drew emphasized that while the negotiations unions have with their leagues will naturally have some differences, the conversations will likely look somewhat similar. “It’s not apples and oranges; they’re maybe different varieties of apples, if you will,” she said.
One of the reasons why the WNBPA CBA negotiations are especially important this year is the growing attention and revenue coming to VNBApart of a larger trend in women's sports. Increased funding and attention, however, has not weakened the unions' desire to work together—in fact, it has only strengthened it. Huster said it's critical that as “investment in women's sports continues to grow and this momentum that everyone talks about all the time, we don't forget what's at the center of it all. And I think both of our organizations would agree, it's the players.”
Huster also mentioned that it was especially noteworthy that Kansas City Current players wore the jerseys, as team owners Angie and Chris Long showed interest when the WNBA team came to town. “It’s very important that this ownership group knows that we have a good relationship with the WNBPA and that it’s definitely important to us that professional athletes be at the center of any conversation,” Huster said.
The growing attention isn't making much of a difference either, Hopkins said.
“We've always been here, and now everyone is kind of just picking up on it, and we're not just going to be grateful for that momentum, but we're going to continue to lean on us to work towards what we know we deserve and have always deserved,” Hopkins said. “They’re just looking at us now—damn timing.”
