Months out from the next season, players in Australia’s top men’s and women’s soccer leagues don’t have a pay agreement in place.
The A-League and A-League Women’s last collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expired on 30 June, and players rejected the league’s latest offer last week after months of talks.
So, what’s going on?
Key players
The A‑Leagues are the top football competitions in Australia and New Zealand. There are 12 men’s teams and 11 women’s teams.
The A-Leagues are run by an organisation called the Australian Professional Leagues (APL).
Players in the A-Leagues are represented by Professional Footballers Australia (PFA), which also supports the Socceroos and the Matildas.
Every five years, the PFA and the APL negotiate a CBA.
What is a CBA?
A CBA is a formal deal that covers things like minimum salaries, workloads, leave, dispute processes, and if players can go on strike or protest.
AFL, NRL, netball, and cricket players all have CBAs with their relevant sport’s governing bodies, and the A-Leagues are no different. The Matildas and Socceroos have a separate CBA with Football Australia.
Offers
The APL offered men’s players a $100,000 lift to the salary cap – a limit on how much a team can spend on player wages to keep the competition balanced. It would have brought the cap to $2.7 million.
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The APL also proposed limiting the number of marquee signings (players who can be paid a salary outside the cap) to one per club.
For women’s players, it offered an increase in the salary cap from $640,000 to $775,000, and to raise the minimum wage by 27%, taking it to just under $35,000 a season.
What they said
APL CEO Steve Rosich told TDA: “We have been negotiating in good faith with the PFA for the past eight months to agree a new CBA to ensure the sustainable growth of the A-Leagues for our clubs and players, and are looking to continue to do so.”
Rosich said the APL would release the fixtures for the A-League Men’s next season this week.
The PFA told TDA: “The players were asked to accept significant concessions without being given confidence that their reform objective would be achieved.”
It said it believes the APL “lacks belief in the potential of the women’s game” and that its plans for the men’s league are “misguided”.
PFA CEO Beau Busch added: “The fact that players voted overwhelmingly to reject the deal, which would have provided certainty… speaks to their commitment to the game’s long-term health and their belief that a new approach is needed.”
Strike?
Under the old CBA, players agreed not to take industrial action, such as holding demonstrations or going on strike.
However, with no CBA currently in effect, players could potentially take action.
Busch told TDA: “The players have concluded the current bargaining process cannot deliver the outcomes required.”
He did not make any specific comments about the possibility of actions.
