labor Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Idiots Who Run Harvard Let Their Low-Wage Workers Go On Strike 

Harvard University has an endowment of $35 billion and employs 47 Nobel laureates. But they weren’t rich or smart enough to pay their dining hall workers enough money to stop them from going on strike this morning. ...

Don't Get Mad. Join A Union.

Shit is fucked up and bullshit. Economic inequality is high and wages are low and people are mad. Want to do something about it? Don’t vote for Donald Trump. Join a union....

Congresswoman Behind Evil Minor League Baseball Wage Depression Bill Changes Her Mind

Cheri Bustos, one of the two members of the House of Representatives behind the “Save America’s Pastime Act”, has pivoted and withdrawn support from her own terrible bill....

Evil Congressmen Want To Make Living Wage For Minor Leaguers Illegal

Minor league baseball players don’t make much money. Since 1976, MLB salaries have risen 2,500 percent while minor league salaries have only gone up 70 percent. Players in low-A ball start at $1,100 a month, while AAA players earn $2,150 per month. Monthly wages slowly increase the longer a player s...

Conor McGregor Grabs The UFC By The Dick, Squeezes

The strangest ongoing story in sports this week has been UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor maybe (but probably not) retiring and either dropping out or being pulled from a main event fight against Nate Diaz in July on what the UFC would like to be their biggest-ever fight card....

UFC Boss Dana White Mad At Conor McGregor For Not Doing Some Dumb Bullshit

Yesterday, UFC featherweight champion Conor McGregor may or may not have retired; it isn’t clear. What is clear is that he won’t participate in a highly-anticipated rematch against Nate Diaz on July 9, unless he does. UFC figurehead Dana White went on The Herd with smooth-skinned ghoul Colin Cowherd...

The NFLPA Caught The Rams Trying To Short Players By Writing Missouri Labor Laws Into Contracts

The Los Angeles Rams took to their move to California with immediate verve, and tried to broadcast their identity by telling you exactly where their press conferences were (Manhattan Beach baby!) and selling you insufferably branded gear. But, according to a report yesterday from PFT, one thing the ...

USWNT Players Association Files Withering Response To U.S. Soccer Lawsuit

U.S. Soccer’s lawsuit against the U.S. Women’s National Team Players Association seeks to answer a seemingly simple question: Do the two organizations have a valid collective bargaining agreement, or not?...

Missouri Head Coach Gary Pinkel Voices Support For Players Going On Strike [UPDATE]

Hours after the athletes of color on Missouri’s football team announced they were going on strike until university president Tim Wolfe is removed from office, head coach Gary Pinkel tweeted out this photo of the team and its coaches with a message of united support for the work stoppage....

America Has Always Wanted To Pretend That Sports Aren't Work

Last month, given the chance to affirm that college athletes have basic labor rights, the National Labor Review Board punted. It’s rare that a sports metaphor so perfectly crafted for lazy headline writers is so fitting, but punting—the most cowardly, spineless, and responsibility-evading decision r...

Happy Labor Day!

What Kain Colter Really Learned At Northwestern

When Kain Colter called for Northwestern football players to unionize in early 2014, he cited his experiences in my class, “Field Studies in the Modern Workplace,” as the turning point in his thinking on the status of NCAA “student-athletes” (or “workers,” depending on one’s interpretation). The ide...

Camden Yards Workers Screwed Over Yet Again

The other day, the Baltimore Orioles got lots of positive press by announcing that stadium staffers would be compensated for wages lost while a state of emergency was declared in the city. Two home games were canceled, another was played at an empty Camden Yards, and three others were moved to Tampa...

How A Secret Brotherhood's Revolt Nearly Destroyed The National League

Today marks the 125th anniversary of the formation of the Players' League, the most radical experiment ever attempted by baseball's major leagues. It was a rebellion led by a slender, brilliant shortstop, who had begun pondering revolt nine months before, in the shadow of the pyramids....

The NCAA Should Pray That Players Are Able To Form A Union

Originally published in Bloomberg View....

Major League Baseball's War On Drugs Is An Immoral Shitshow

Major league ballplayers should never have agreed to drug testing. They should have told any handwringing writer who had anything to say about it to fuck right off, and they should have said the same to any handwringing politician who wanted to do something about it. They should have made clear that...

Marvin Miller, The Man Who Beat Some Sense Into Baseball

He was in the phone book. That's the thing that always got me about Marvin Miller, the former head of the MLB players association and the man who pulled baseball out of its crude prehistory. You expect your heroes to be unlisted. You don't expect to find one of them in the white pages, right there b...

Someone Is Actually Sticking Up For The NFL In This Labor Deal Mess

It was bound to happen. Call it Murphy's Law of Contrarian Journalism. Two weeks back, it was ESPN's Darren Rovell looking to blame the NHL lockout on "die-hard fans," and now Ashley Fox, his colleague at the WWL, has stepped her toe into the shitstorm that erupted Monday night. Seems we've really a...

NHL Lockout Is Official

The NHL released a brief statement at 12:05 AM indicating that the players would be locked out. Here is the full, 151-word statement:...

Minor League Baseball: The Last Bastion Of Acceptable Exploitation In Professional Sports (Not Counting The NCAA)

For every top-flight prospect apprenticing in the minors after receiving a multi-million dollar signing bonus, hundreds of players are drafted every year and get $1,000, tops. Salaries start at $1,100 a month, and the checks only come for half a year. As Lily Rothman says over at Slate, most of thes...