BarcelonaThe professionalization of women’s football has only recently started and, little by little, the real and important issues for footballers, referees and clubs are being addressed. This Friday, according to ARA, the first meeting will be held to start drafting the collective agreement that will lead the players to take a definitive step forward in their conditions as professional footballers. In fact, the first meeting between unions and the F League was supposed to take place last week, but due to the crisis with the arbitral tribunal – which announced an indefinite stoppage to demand better working conditions – it had to be postpone and the meeting has been moved to the calendar for this Friday. The agreement in force, which was signed in August 2020, has expired this June, so the terms need to be renegotiated again taking into account the new status of the competition.
August 11, 2020 was a historic day for women’s sports: the BOE published the first collective agreement that regulated the working conditions of female soccer players in the First Women’s Division, at that time the Iberdrola League . After more than a year of negotiations and a long road of obstacles, the first collective agreement of women’s football was a reality. But it was only valid for two years, a fact that urged the parties to sit down again soon at the table to renegotiate and improve the conditions for the new document. The 2020 agreement is minimal and the intention of the new understanding was to make progress on several points that had been conflicting until now.
New agreement and a different context
In the document that expired this June, one of the major advances was the protection of professional footballers in cases of maternity and work incapacity. The agreement, which was retroactive in effect from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020 and extendable for successive periods of a football season -as it ended up happening-, establishes a minimum salary of 16,000 euros per year or the proportional amount that corresponds depending on the agreed working day.
Now all this pales in comparison to the first women’s professional league in history. The unions are demanding substantial improvements in the new draft and the League is sitting at the table still with the newly created structure. A cross-country race begins this Friday in which all parties seek to consolidate the professionalization of women’s football.
