Industrial Relations and Professional Team Sports in Australia

Abstract

This paper examines the formation of the Victorian Football League Players' Association and gives an account of their development during 1974. The emergence of the V.F.L.P.A. is set against the background of an industry circumscribed by a series of monopsonistic controls which severely limit the employment opportunities of footballers; of the growth of similar associations in a number of overseas professional sports; and growing industrial tensions in a number of Australian sports. For students of Australia's system of industrial relations the emergence of the V.F.L.P.A. should be of interest in the sense that it appears that collective bargaining will be the method through which rules of the workplace will be determined. Both the internal activities and the external machinations of the V.F.L.P.A. are examined in some detail. Particular attention is paid to the V.F.L.P.A.'s concern with internal communications and to reasons for the V.F.L.'s rather lukewarm opposition to the formation of the V.F.L.P.A. The conclusion, on the basis of overseas experience, offers some policy recommendations to help improve the cohesiveness and effectiveness of the V.F.L.P.A.

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