Skip to main content

Democratic Senator Introduces Bill to Put Pressure on Resolving US Women’s Soccer Equal Pay Fight


Many readers have likely heard that the US Women’s soccer team won the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup this past Sunday in France.  Prior to, and during the tournament itself, the issue of equal pay for these players was a major talking point.  (Remember, a lawsuit had previously been filed in relation to the equal pay fight by these players.  Currently, that lawsuit is still pending.)

Following Sunday’s win, a bill was introduced in Congress by West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin which proposed withholding any federal funds from being allocated for the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup unless the US men’s and women’s national soccer teams are paid equally.  (For those unaware, the US is cohosting the 2026 tournament along with Canada and Mexico.)  If this legislation manages to pass, that would put a significant amount of pressure on the US Soccer Federation to pay both the men’s and women’s teams equally or risk a potential catastrophic financial shortfall in trying to host the 2026 tournament.

With that being said, it might not even take passage of this bill to achieve equal pay for the players.  Currently, there is a wide range of attention (and criticism) on the fact that there is a difference in play among the players (notwithstanding the fact that the US women’s team has had a prolonged period of success while the US men’s team has struggled in recent years.)  I would suspect the equal pay latter will come to a head in the next few months, in part because there is to be a mediation set soon in regard to the equal pay lawsuit.  Stay tuned.


For additional information:  https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states/story/3897533/senator-no-equal-payno-public-26-wc-funds

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more