Media releases

• Brock expert says CHL settlement leaves room for further action on behalf of players  

  Tuesday, May 19, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 19 May 2020 – R0088

   

  With the announcement of a settlement in a six-year legal battle between the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) and its players, a Brock expert says there remains a need to protect the well-being of major junior players across the country by ensuring they are paid minimum wage.

   

  The settlement will require the CHL to pay $30 million to former players by October 2020, which Brock University Assistant Professor of Labour Studies Simon Black says is a partial victory.

   

  “The settlement is better than nothing,” says Black. “Due to the CHL’s effective lobbying campaign, provincial governments have exempted players from coverage under employment standards legislation, the basic minimum protections and rights afforded workers under the law.”

   

  Black, who has written opinion pieces and scholarly articles on the case for years, says the next step is to protect the rights of current junior hockey players.

   

  “The CHL’s business model is premised on the exploitation of young athletes’ labour,” he says.  “In their quest to avoid paying their players the minimum wage, the league has successfully fought off unionization and lobbied provincial and state governments to exempt major junior hockey players from basic labour protections and rights. And they have done so while hiding behind the myth that CHL players are ‘amateur student-athletes,’ not employees of their club.”

   

  Black says further action on behalf of the leagues’ players must be taken by the labour movement as a whole.

   

  “The labour movement, including players’ unions like the NHLPA, must step in to protect these young athletes by pressing provincial governments to reverse these exemptions,” he says. “While this settlement does bring some justice to former players, current players will continue to be the only workers at the arena — from the coaches on down to the hot dog sellers — that are not paid at least the minimum wage.”

   

  Assistant Professor of Labour Studies Simon Black, an expert in athletic labour, workers’ rights and activism in high-performance sport, is available for interviews.

   

  
  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

   

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca or 905-347-1970

   

  – 30 –

  Categories: Media releases

• Sport organizations need to be part of resumption plan: Brock expert

  Friday, May 15, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 15 May 2020 – R0087

  At first Madelyn Law was excited to hear that gymnastics was listed as one of the sports that could resume in Ontario starting Tuesday, May 19.

  As a gymnast herself and the mother of two athletic kids, it seemed like good news, until she thought about it a bit more.

  “I want nothing more than a sport like gymnastics to get up and running as soon as possible,” says Law, Associate Professor of Health Sciences at Brock University, who has spent her career engaged in public health research. “It would be great to see our children being physically active and getting back in the game, but I believe the guidance about what this looks like and deeming specific sports to be OK at this time is misguided.”

  Law says gymnastics is a good example of a sport that needs more consideration.

  “You have a club of kids who have not been training properly for two months. They’ll need assistance from their coaches in a hands-on way — beside them, and helping them flip over. That can’t happen safely from six feet away,” she says.

  There’s also the concern over how to keep equipment disinfected when you have multiple gymnasts all using the same apparatus or jumping into a sponge pit.

  “Just because this is an individual sport, does not mean that they can physically distance from their peers or coaches,” Law says.

  She says it’s misguided to think that holding practices for a team sport like soccer is less safe for public health reasons than gymnastics.

  “If players brought their own soccer ball and were given their own space to train, the coaches could still help them with drills while allowing the players to see their friends and feel like they have some sort of normalcy,” she says. “There would need to be changes and not all skills could be done, but it’s better than nothing.”

  She says more consideration needs to be taken around each sport, and adds that sport organizations themselves should play a significant role in the decisions around resumption of activity timelines.

  “We don’t need individuals who may not know the intricacies of specific-sport participation telling sport organizations that they can open or not,” Law says. “They need to work more closely with sport organizations to say, ‘You can open if you meet the specific public health guidelines.’”

  Madelyn Law, Associate Professor of Health Sciences at Brock University, is available for phone and video interviews with the media.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca or 905-347-1970

  – 30 –

  Categories: Media releases