Collective Bargaining in Professional Sports

Catalog description

In this course, students will learn how collective bargaining works in professional sports and how it compares to bargaining in other industries. Students explore the process of collective bargaining in professional sports in the US and Canada. In particular, the course will examine how the application of leadership, leverage and resources by professional sports employers and their player employees' associations impacts the collective bargaining process and outcomes in each sport. This course will also focus on how the interaction of these three attributes has produced landmark collective bargaining agreements, as well as disruptive strikes, lockouts and litigation. This course will give context to present day professional sports collective bargaining by examining the history and structure of the players associations, the laws affecting professional sports bargaining, and the role of sports agents in the process. Students will have the opportunity to learn how professional sports bargaining illustrates universal lessons about the process of collective bargaining, and also how it is unique. Guest speakers with considerable experience in professional sports collective bargaining will give students in this course real world context and will afford them the opportunity to question actual professional sports collective bargaining practitioners.