Opinion: A New CBA For A Sustainable USL Championship
Recently reports have surfaced that the USL Players Association have worked out a new collective bargaining agreement with the league’s endorsement. Now that that agreement is final, it is out for us to comb through and analyze. Far from boring horse-trading, I think this agreement is groundbreaking in many ways – and may well lead to better working conditions for lower-division soccer players throughout North America.
Ratification was announced last week on a deal to last the next five years. There are many important aspects which will affect the lives of players over the course of the agreement. New floors for player pay, as well as per diem rates, will hopefully lead to more players feeling financially secure in their decision to continue their professional careers. There will also be similar base requirements for contract terms that allow players more stability over the course of the playing season.
To go into this in more detail, I will turn to reporting by Jeff Rueter of the Athletic. “The heart of the deal is its economic baselines, which would go into effect ahead of the 2022 season. This drafted CBA establishes minimum compensation for Championship players, with the majority of players earning a minimum of $2,700 per month next season. The minimum compensation would be a combination of a player’s wages as well as any bonuses, any team-provided housing and medical insurance. Additionally, clubs will have six “flex contracts” at lower compensation rates for players who may not otherwise be signed under the new structure.”
That monthly minimum ahead of the 2022 season will go up another $150 before the 2023 season, a further $150 before the 2024 season, and then a further $200 before the 2025 season. The flex contract options are all slightly lower. These figures, which will represent wages as well as “any bonuses, any team-provided housing[,] and medical insurance,” will be standardized along with the base length of contract for players with the league. Players previously had much less of a guarantee for the length of their contract, some only being signed on for seven-month periods. According to this reporting, the contractual season will itself be standardized to run from February 1 to November 30, while “teams will still be encouraged to offer twelve-month contracts…”
Jeff Rueter also writes, “the numbers represent a significant increase over what’s been standard payment practices across the USL over the past decade. Teams again signed players to contracts without any guaranteed payment in the 2021 season, sources tell The Athletic, instead offering bonus-laden deals based on performance and mandatory public appearances. Considering contracts like these, as well as those earning less than $2,700 a month, the new minimum compensation would immediately improve wages for at least 25 percent of all current Championship players, per a source.”
Additionally, Rueter added, “crucially, players have also retained free agency rights for all, with no waiver mechanisms and no restricted free agency. USL players will continue to be able to move clubs at the end of their deals without hurdles.”
It must be remembered that many players in the USL Championship are former NCAA athletes. These players will all likely have graduated with a degree from college that might allow them to pursue some career outside of the Beautiful Game. In essence, we as fans are asking them frequently to work for a lower pay than they may be eligible for if they tried to find work in another field. Those players who come in from teams abroad, such as Neill Collins did before he retired from play, will likely have higher compensation packages to entice them to sign with the team. However, the majority of players who make up a team’s roster in this league will have come from NCAA backgrounds.
A quick survey of the Rowdies’ current rosters shows players who went to Mercer University, Wofford College, Young Harris College, Butler University, Stony Brook University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Notre Dame, Florida Gulf Coast University, and Dartmouth College.
While these might not all be household names, it is obviously the case that anyone with a college degree – be it from Dartmouth or a place like Jacksonville University – will be looking, upon graduation, to make significantly more than the average minimum wage in the area they live in. In professional soccer at the lower divisions, teams may not have the money to invest in higher wages for players after paying all the fees and costs associated with just staying afloat. Some players may end up getting pennies to stay in the game.
Establishing these base requirements will make it so teams either have to do this, or must find new funding to support themselves before they go bust. While it may be that a potential team owner somewhere balks at these requirements, those players who represent the league will finally know that they have something to actually live on, with a guarantee, especially with the cost of living rising in so many places. It should be immediately obvious how crucial that is to stability overall, and it will have the added benefit of weeding out potential owners who don’t see this league as anything more than a curiosity piece. This is an important step in marketing the league’s ability to stick around not only to fans – who will hopefully see the benefit of financially secure players – but the players themselves who might otherwise decide it’s simply not worth it to play soccer for paltry earnings. One quick example should drive home this point.
Mike Fisher was a soccer player at the University of Virginia starting in 1993. Major League Soccer did not exist then; but it would exist by the time he graduated and was considering his future career. A highly rated player out of college – he had even represented the United States at the under-23 level – Fisher was drafted by the Tampa Bay Mutiny, a short lived MLS team representing our area. After graduation, however, he entered the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia instead of signing on with the league. The dreams of professional soccer were not enough to entice him when other opportunities were available.
Young professionals leaving the game early is unfortunately common in the United States – a symptom of the soccer landscape where many players do go to college and then find their options so monetarily limited. It was ultimately better for Fisher to do this, as well as people like Harry Shipp, Brandon Vincent, and Steve Neumann.
Rather than put these choices in such stark terms for many recent college graduates, the USL Championship has decided that these policies will serve them better in the long term. This can be the only conclusion when they decided to recognize the USL Players Association way back in November 2018. All of these decisions are firsts in professional soccer at the lower divisions in North America.
It is laudable that the league sees giving players a voice will give them a better shot at sticking it out. And, if and when those players do have a complaint to register with the league, there will now be a standardized process for doing so.
There is high support for labor in the United States in early November 2021. So called “Striketober” has been a reminder of the importance of workers in this country. It appears that strikes are something USL Championship fans can look to avoid in the future, while also seeing just how clearly the players matter to the owners of the teams they love to support.
The USL, one would hope, can lead the way in making American soccer more sustainable for everyone below the tier-one level.
