Interview with the key person behind US women’s collective bargaining agreement: “The Bible” and 400 hours at the bargaining table

The lead negotiator behind last month’s historic National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) has called for women’s players union globally to unite and challenge a male dominated status quo that disadvantages female players.

Meghann Burke, NWSL Players’ Association Executive Director, has told Off The Pitch how the CBA has set a new standard for women’s sport and of her desire “to share the lessons learnt from this with players unions elsewhere around the world.”

The CBA, which was approved on 29 April, raises the minimum player salary by almost 60 per cent to $35,000, but also brings in a raft of other financial benefits, including a revenue sharing cut of broadcast income if the NWSL becomes profitable.

Players will be guaranteed 42 days of holiday, a seven-day in season summer break, parental leave, salary continuation if they become pregnant, and mental health leave for up to six months.

Burke says that a raft of other non-financial aspects – these include a fixed season with start and end windows, rules on the number and frequency of games, and rules governing the professionalisation of media and commercial appearances – further professionalise the NWSL, make it a stronger product and benefit both the league and players.

Short careers

“Players need to be able to survive, but beyond that, they want to play at the highest level that they possibly can for a limited period of time they've got,” she says.  

“And in order to do that, they need the best conditions possible. They deserve professional environments: locker rooms, facilities, adequate staff, coaching staff, medical staff, medical care.

“If an average career is anywhere from 3 to 7 years, you know, once you get into your thirties and forties, you realise that goes by it in the blink of an eye. Our goal in this contract was to create a player experience that is worthy of and obviously billing as being the best league in the world.”

Momentous agreements

The NWSL is considered the strongest women’s league in the world and home to most of the US Women’s national team (USWNT) players, such as Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan and Rose Lavelle. The world champions are unique in that their women’s team is more famous and successful on and off the pitch than the men’s team.

In February a $24 million settlement was reached between the USWNT players and US Soccer, with a commitment to pay women and men’s national team players equally. The deal resonated globally.

The CBA, which was separate to this award, had been agreed a few weeks before that headline deal, but was only ratified in late April. Burke – a 41-year-old retired goalkeeper and lawyer, who after a solid playing career, which included a spell in England, has carved out a highly respected career running the players union – is considered the key player in that negotiation.

But rather than rile the NWSL executives whose processes she was effectively taking apart, her approach gained her praise. In an interview with The Athletic last month, the NWSL Commissioner, Jessica Berman, described Burke as the stakeholder in the game she spoke to most and as someone who “adds value” to the league’s processes.  “She’s given me every reason to trust and collaborate with her.

She represents her constituents appropriately and brings forward important ideas for us to consider,” added Berman. A European players union colleague describes her as “doing a great job on the negotiation”. They added: “She’s very cool.”

Path to agreement

“It's been a long time coming,” Burke reflects. “We gave notice of our intent to collectively bargain for our first contract back in November 2020. We met for the first time in person in March 2021, when the PA presented our comprehensive proposal, which was a strategic decision rather than do this in a piecemeal basis.

“And then we met over 40 times for the next roughly a year, both in-person and via Zoom. We spent, I think, more than 400 hours at the bargaining table, but infinitely more than that in caucus and prepping players and meeting and drafting documents. “

“You start from the position that NWSL had written all the rules. In a first contract, that's your starting point, is that the other sides just made all the decisions unilaterally and written all the rules. And so you're trying to claw some of that back, to tilt the scales and balance them in in the direction of the players.”

Knowledge sharing

She acknowledges that the players union borrowed from other CBAs in US sport. She gestures when describing the size of what she terms “the bible” – a stack of other CBAs relating to other sports. She says that it was important that they too shared details of their CBA so that other player unions could benefit from their acquired knowledge.

“We benefited from learning from other people and wanted to pay it forward,” she says.

Q: Have other player unions been in contact?

“We've met with a number of PFAs already, we're in regular communication with Fifpro and are in the process of becoming a part of Fifpro. We absolutely intend to share the lessons learnt from this with players unions elsewhere around the world particularly. We've heard from Europe and Canada, but we also want to see the game grow, you know, in Mexico and South America.”

Broader challenges

I ask Burke what the key to getting better pay and conditions for women’s football is. Employment law experts recently told Off The Pitch that they think the answer for now lies in public pressure, not with their profession.

Burke, however, offers an alternative vision, saying that the business case for the women’s game still needs to be properly made. “Women's pro soccer will really take off is when the business argument is there,” she says.

She points to commercial agreements made with genuinely blue chip sponsors, such as Mastercard, Delta and Nike, as proof that sponsors are “starting to understand there's money to be made here.” It is, she says, “a tremendous opportunity.”

Maybe, I suggest, an international challenge being made by player unions to football’s male-centric status quo. A good place to start could be challenging FIFA over World Cup prize money. Would she be up for such a battle?

“Why not? Absolutely, yeah. All paths lead back to FIFA. We absolutely should be looking at FIFA. They're supposed to be growing the game at all levels and so you've left 50 per cent of the world's population behind. I think it's time to step up.”