Supporting the Players in AFL Pay Negotiations

They’re seemingly undeserving – overpaid young men with reputations as misogynist boozers who need a pay increase about as much as Ricky Nixon needs a job at Melbourne Girls’ Grammar. As a result, footballers fighting for higher pay can struggle to evoke sympathy from even those who would miss their mother’s funeral to link arms on a picket line.

However AFL players do deserve our support in their Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. They might not care for our health the way nurses do, or build our bridges like construction workers, or educate us like teachers. But they are similarly exploited, for entertainment, instead of something more tangible. And their working conditions are often grim, just like the rest of us.

The stereotype about high earning, fast living footballers does not accord with the reality for most players. The majority come from working class backgrounds; pay to train outside of school for years on end in the hope of getting drafted. If they do get a place in the AFL, only a few will earn enough to sustain them after retirement. In fact only a tiny 25 players earned more than $500 000 last year, while the rookies on the minimum wage took home only a $49 400 base payment plus $2800 per match.

The mean wage of an AFL player is around $180 000 and the average playing career lasts three years. Do the math and you’ll see that $540 000 is not enough to set you up for life.

The occupational health and safety risks of their profession are high - it is certain that they will suffer an injury at work and this often cuts short their careers. For those lucky enough to avoid injury, retirement by 35 is the norm, most leaving with no prospect of earning income from the skills they’ve spent all their lives developing.

Given all the facts, it’s hardly too much for the AFL Players’ Association (AFLPA) to ask for football players to be better looked after.

Their claim in this year’s negotiation includes player pensions to kick in 10 years after retirement until the age of 65 which would be the first of its kind in Australia. They also want a comprehensive post-career compensation scheme for injuries which is pertinent considering the issues with long-term brain damage seen increasingly in footballers here and in the United States.

Altogether the claim submitted by the players is for 25 to 27 per cent of the game’s overall turnover to be allocated to players over the three years of the deal. This is $200 million more than the AFL's offer.

The percentage requested by the AFLPA is reasonable, and, if anything, a relative pay cut from 2001, given the players received 27.5 per cent of overall turnover that year. If the AFL could afford it then, they can certainly afford it now with the $1.25 billion record TV rights deal signed, sealed and delivered.

But CEO, Andrew Demetriou (who earned a cool $2.2 million in 2010) is refusing to budge on the AFL’s offer, pitting fans against the players with assertions that ticket prices will have to rise to pay for any such increase in wages. Although I wasn’t invited to the meetings, I’m pretty sure Demetriou didn’t make the same arguments while receiving a 275 per cent increase in his pay since 2004.

Similarly, none of the AFL’s 11 executives who were paid a total of $6.2 million last year publicly announced their concern about rising ticket prices as a result of their exorbitant packages.

If Demetriou looked outside Australia he may be grateful that the AFL players have such low expectations. European soccer players’ wages constitute around 65 per cent of their game’s total revenue and similar figures can be seen in the US.

Within Australian sport, the story is very different. Athletes here receive a much smaller slice of the sports pie - generally 18 to 30 per cent of total revenue for team sports. Luckily Bonds have helped put food on the table for Stephanie Rice as swimmers receive only around 10 per cent of the total revenue that sport brings in. The athletes in more penurious sports will be watching the AFL dispute closely in the hope that the AFLPA’s campaign manages to raise the bar to help improve this situation. Solidarity has already come by way of Paul Marsh from the Australian Cricket Players’ Association who has publically contradicted some of Demetriou’s arguments. Let’s hope other athletes show their support as the campaign progresses.

For now, the AFLPA have all but ruled out strike action but have taken the unusual step of mobilizing their members for an all-in meeting to show that they serious about taking on AFL management. And, in what must be immensely annoying for the unprepossessing Demetriou, some of the most popular players in the League have come out publicly swinging, a move bound to rally public support. Dale Thomas, arguably the League’s most entertaining player told Nova radio, “The players and the players association have decided that if we have to play hard ball, we will.” In the same interview he also managed to put some important pressure on the AFLPA, “We won't be bullied around, I think in the past we've been bullied around.”

If they do play hard ball, the AFL players will need their fans support and may even call upon it. And if this happens, anyone who supports workers rights should support the footballers in this campaign.