U.S. women and 60 Minutes: What we still don’t know

Yes, Carli Lloyd actually said the women’s team deserves to be paid more than the men.

We still don’t know what that means.

So my Guardian piece on the matter covers some familiar ground. But we do have some news, and it’s probably not good. This labor dispute has no signs of progress. The next round of talks has been delayed, and we don’t know why. The EEOC doesn’t seem to be close to issuing any sort of guidance.

The women are willing to talk about the issues. But only on their terms.

A few other thoughts:

• I’m not comfortable calling the women’s soccer team the greatest team in women’s sports history. Not when the USA had to catch up to other countries in basketball and is now overwhelmingly No. 1 in a sense that the women’s soccer team never was.
• The piece wasn’t bad, especially given its generalist audience, but some of the editing made little sense. Rich Nichols made a point about the similarities (or differences?) between the U.S. soccer dispute and the NBA/WNBA, and the context of his point wasn’t at all clear. Hope Solo made a point about the men getting paid “win or lose” — in the context of U.S. women’s salaries that are paid, you guessed, win or lose. (Or sit out entirely.)
• The points raised on travel are misleading if not outright false. The men travel business class when they’re flying to camp from their European club teams and on a charter when they’re going some place like San Pedro Sula. They’ve sometimes been in coach in other situations, though I don’t know how recently. The women’s Memorandum of Understanding says flights over three hours are business class or charter. If USSF is violating that deal, then that’s a point worth mentioning. (That said, the sides are trying to negotiate what happens in the future.)
• We still don’t know how any of this affects the NWSL. Some people who chatted with me say it’s not fair to expect the U.S. women’s deal to have any NWSL ramifications. Maybe it’s not. But if U.S. Soccer is going to continue subsidizing salaries for its players in the NWSL, then it’ll be difficult to write a labor deal that doesn’t address that fact.

Here’s the story, which has a surprising number of comments considering that the U.S. soccer community has been preoccupied with the Klinsmann matter: The USA women’s national team are demanding equal pay. Is it realistic? | Football | The Guardian