The US’s biggest pro women’s sports unions have found strength together | OneFootball

As the WNBA’s biggest stars warmed up for the All-Star Game on 19 July, the message came through loud and clear. All wore shirts reading “Pay Us What You Owe Us,” with the Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association (WNBPA) logo prominently displayed below. The visual immediately went viral, drawing attention to the union’s ongoing negotiations with the league for a new collective bargaining agreement.

Had the messaging started and ended with those shirts, it would have been notable, but limited in scope. Instead, a continuing campaign became just one example of the ways the two most prominent women’s players’ unions in the US have worked together to advance their causes.

“When you’re fighting for something historic, something that has never been done before, it cannot happen in a vacuum,” said Erin D Drake, the WNBPA’s senior advisor and legal counsel who was credited for the shirt campaign, which sought to get as many other people and organizations involved as possible.

To that end, the shirts were made available to buy online by the end of the All-Star Game, and soon the WNBPA’s soccer counterparts were customers.

“Most of our staff had already gone on the website and purchased the shirts themselves,” said Tori Huster, the deputy executive director of the National Women’s Soccer League Players’ Association (NWSLPA), adding that a stream of player requests followed. The two unions got to talking, and soon afterward the NWSLPA asked its members to indicate if they wanted to be sent a shirt reading “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 was no top-down directive about when to wear the shirts, so the players decided to make their statement before the team’s home match against the Washington Spirit on 13 September.

The NWSLPA was quick to amplify images of those players, even as the Current and NWSL broadcast partners 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 ION NWSL’s Instagram account, and Scripps, which owns ION, also did not provide a reason when asked).

“It’s not just female athletes in the W that are experiencing this,” Hopkins said. “It’s a message to send for virtually every female athlete across the United States in whatever league it may be that we deserve pay.”

Besides, not speaking out about the issue would have been a break from how the unions’ relationship has grown.

“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, which was founded in 1998, set an example for the NWSLPA, which came along in 2017. WNBA players have a storied history of activism, speaking out against racist systems, police violence, discrimination against transgender people, and other issues. “Their collective action, their advocacy, for sure has been a shining example of what we aspire to be,” Huster said.

When the NWSLPA was in its infancy, its leaders “were like, Googling what labor unions were,” said Huster. Meghann Burke, the organization’s executive director, was its only full-time staff member at the beginning. During that time, her relationship with her WNBPA counterpart Terri Carmichael Jackson was the main conduit between the unions. Now more folks from both teams are in touch, with Huster and Drake especially connected.

“There’s probably not a month that goes by without Erin and I communicating about something,” Huster said.

The early asymmetry has shifted into solidarity. “Over time, as our union has grown in strength,” Burke said, “that’s become a relationship of reciprocity and mutuality.”

It’s a relationship that has shown itself in joint public actions. In 2022, when the NWSLPA led a joint investigation with the NWSL into abuse in the league, Jackson sat on the oversight committee with Burke and others. “Terri was really important to us in course-correcting the league and creating a new standard for player safety in the NWSL,” said Burke. In December 2024, when players from the Chicago Sky and Chicago Stars, as well as Burke, testified in an Illinois hearing about House Bill 5841, there was communication between the unions in organizing that appearance. Behind the scenes, the unions have worked together to organize educational programs for players across both leagues.

Solidarity is an ethos as well as a strategy for the unions. Unions believe workers are stronger together in the face of corporate interests – why shouldn’t that logic extend to solidarity between unions themselves?

“It’s a tactic to be divided. It’s a tactic to feel in isolation when you are trying to assert your value and your worth,” Drake said, adding that both the WNBPA and NWSLPA reject that tactic.

Solidarity, of course, doesn’t mean that the unions operate in total synchrony. But they have more than enough in common to make collaboration useful.

“Our orientation to the issues that affect workers is certainly grounded in our experience as women,” said Burke. Shared priorities like ensuring protections for mothers, overcoming underinvestment, and securing healthy work environments and fair compensation drive both unions.

Another commonality is the unions’ relative youth compared to their equivalents in the NBA (1954), NFL (1956), MLB (1966), and NHL (1967).

“Anytime you have an emerging league, a newer league, it’s more challenging, and by definition, the union is going to have typically less strength and a more difficult time,” said Nellie Drew, a professor in sports law at the University at Buffalo School of Law. “[That] is why it’s especially important now for these two unions to collaborate and to assist each other.”

As the organizations’ working relationship has grown, so has its importance during the United States’ current political climate. The unions issued a joint statement opposing federal immigration raids earlier this year – a result of WNBPA members asking their union to speak out.

“All of our statements – all of them – come from our player leadership,” Drake said. She added: “It was clear through conversations that NWSLPA members were having similar observations.” Thus, the WNBPA invited the NWSLPA to be a part of the statement. The NWSLPA, which has a sizable international membership and a deep understanding that soccer is global, jumped on board.

The unions’ connection to national politics also arises due to their membership in the AFL-CIO Sports Council – a group of players’ unions within the largest federation of labor unions in the United States. That organization recently brought a big issue to the unions’ attention: The Student Compensation and Opportunity for Revenue Equity (Score) Act.

Burke told the Guardian that all the unions in the council had concerns that the federal bill would “prevent workers from organizing and create anti-trust exemptions for the NCAA.”

But the WNBPA and NWSLPA were also concerned about the Score Act’s implications for Title IX – the 1972 law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in federally-funded educational programs. Title IX was not mentioned in the bill, which aims to codify Name, Likeness, and Image (NIL) policies, opening the possibility that sex-based discrimination could occur at federally-funded schools with sponsorship money in the balance.

In July, the Democratic Women’s Caucus sent a letter to members of congress associated with the bill, and a couple months later, Burke and Drake spoke about the issue in a congressional briefing hosted by the caucus. “For this briefing, the NWSLPA came to us, and asked us to participate, and that was a no-brainer because at the end of the day, regardless of what the text of the proposed SCORE Act says, Title IX is not contemplated within the bill,” Drake told the Guardian, “and that is a death blow to to all of us, frankly, because we wouldn’t be here if it were not for Title IX.”

The shirts may have gotten headlines, but both unions know that the attention ultimately serves the greater purpose of winning better conditions in their CBAs.

“We can see the NWSLPA standing with the WNBPA during this contract fight because they know what it means to fight for respect on the job, for fair pay, and for a share in the massive profit their labor generates,” said Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO.

Indeed, leaders from both unions said that the unions’ CBAs are always in conversation. “I’m sure the WNBPA is looking at our most recent CBA and some of the provisions that we secured … and trying to improve on that,” Burke said, a sentiment echoed by Drake. “And similarly, whatever wins they are able to secure in their next CBA, we’ll be looking to that when we’re in negotiations next.”

Drew emphasized that while the negotiations the unions have with their leagues will naturally have some differences, the conversations likely look somewhat similar. “They’re not apples and oranges; they’re like maybe different types of apples, if you will,” she said.

One of the reasons the WNBPA’s CBA negotiations are especially critical this year is the increasing attention and revenue coming to the WNBA, part of a larger trend in women’s sports. The greater funding and attention, however, hasn’t dampened the unions’ desire to work together – if anything, it’s only strengthened it. Huster said it’s imperative that as “the investment in women’s sports continues to rise, and this momentum that everyone keeps talking about – that we don’t forget what is at the center of that. And I think both of our organizations would agree that that’s the players.”

Huster also mentioned that it was especially notable that Kansas City Current players wore the shirts, as the team’s owners, Angie and Chris Long, have shown interest in bringing a WNBA team to the city. “It’s really important that that ownership group knows that we’re well in it in our relationship with the WNBPA, and that it’s definitely important to us that professional athletes are at the forefront of any conversation that’s being had,” Huster said.

For Hopkins, the rising attention also doesn’t change things too much.

“We’ve always been here, and now everyone’s kind of just catching on, and we’re not just gonna be grateful for that quote unquote momentum, but continuing to build off of us to work towards what we know we deserve and have always deserved,” Hopkins said. “It’s just now there’s eyes on us – about damn time.”

Header image: [Photograph: Steph Chambers/Getty Images]