Judge dismisses US women's national soccer team's equal pay claims

Authored by edition.cnn.com and submitted by Tommy__Douglas
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(CNN) The US women's national team's fight for equality suffered a major blow Friday, as a federal judge rejected the players' claims that they were paid less than the men's national team.

Claims by the players of unequal working conditions based on travel conditions, specifically charter flights and hotel accommodations, and support services, specifically medical and training support, can still go to trial.

The USWNT originally filed a lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation in March 2019 , with 28 members of the team listed as plaintiffs. Friday's ruling was issued in response to a motion for summary judgment to dismiss the lawsuit by the federation in US District Court for the Central District of California, according to a court filing.

The suit alleges the US Soccer Federation's payment practices amount to federal discrimination by paying women less than men "for substantially equal work and by denying them at least equal playing, training, and travel conditions; equal promotion of their games; equal support and development for their games; and other terms and conditions of employment equal to the MNT."

However, Judge R. Gary Klausner wrote in his decision that members of the USWNT did not prove wage discrimination under the Equal Pay Act because the women's team played more games and made more money than the men's team.

Zephyrs_rmg on May 2nd, 2020 at 17:23 UTC »

Okay because of the structure of their agreements and the amounts involved it seems some people are having a hard time understanding it and just go with their bias. So here is the best EILI5 I could come up with for the situation (more like EILI12 but i tried).

2 employees are offered the SAME contracts as sales reps for $30k/yr with 35% commission.

Employee A accepts. Employee B rejects.

Employee B counters asking for $50k/yr and a bunch of other benefits. Company Accepts but with only 15% commission. Both Employee B and Company AGREE to the compromise.

A year goes by:

Employee A doesn’t do that great and only has $100k in sales so they get $65k (35% commission x $100k sales + their $30k salary).

Employee B has a great year and has $400k in sales so they get $110k (15% commission x $400k sales + their $50k salary).

Employee B sues company for ‘discrimination’ because if they had Employee As contract (the one they rejected) they would have made $170k (35% commission x $400k sales + $30k salary)

(This also ignores that the company offered both employees the same contract even though Employee A is selling items with higher profit margins)

GuavaOfAxe on May 2nd, 2020 at 16:10 UTC »

Unless I'm reading this wrong, this article is ridiculous. It starts off with:

The US women's national team's fight for equality suffered a major blow Friday, as a federal judge rejected the players' claims that they were paid less than the men's national team.

You have to read halfway through the article to find out that the claim was rejected because they were being paid more than the men's team.

anotherjunkie on May 2nd, 2020 at 15:40 UTC »

However, Judge R. Gary Klausner wrote in his decision that members of the USWNT did not prove wage discrimination under the Equal Pay Act because the women's team played more games and made more money than the men's team.

The women's team also rejected a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) where they would have the same pay structure as the men's team in favor of a different CBA, Klausner wrote.

The women's CBA guarantees that players will be compensated regardless of whether they play a match or not, while the men's CBA calls for players to be paid if they are called into camp to play and then participate in a match, according to the summary judgment.

Klausner wrote that the women were asking for a court to conclude that the women were paid less than men because had the women been paid under the men's CBA, they would have earned more than they did under their own CBA.

"This approach — merely comparing what each team would have made under the other team's CBA — is untenable in this case because it ignores the reality that the MNT and WNT bargained for different agreements which reflect different preferences, and that the WNT explicitly rejected the terms they now seek to retroactively impose on themselves," Klausner wrote.

Their player’s union chose a benefits package that allowed the WNT to get salaries, paid leave, and severance pay. They got paid more overall for more games, but also more on a per-game-average than the highest paid men players. This lawsuit had no basis from the beginning, but it made for a bunch of good headlines I guess.