Sport Today

Obviously nothing is childish about established law; I'd like to think
you know that's not what I meant.

And it's true in the US for salaried employees; but when you get into
contracts, that's a big difference.  But contracted positions are rare
for individuals, tends to be used only in jobs that are very
'illliquid' in the employment market (executives, some rare
technologies).  I've signed contracts before, for example, to do a
series of jobs that depended one on the other.  I haven't tried to
break the contracts, but I would *expect* that if I were to try it I
could, but I'd have to pay some sort of penalty to the employer.  A bit
like breaking an apartment lease.

Does European employment law really invalidate all *contracts*?  That
seems nutty.

Firstly, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if I'm talking out of my arse
here. This is just my understanding of the situation.

To me, American employment law seems nutty. It's skewed way too far in
favour of employers. European law specifies a set of minimum standards,
such as, maximum working hours, minimum paid leave, amount of notice an
employer must give an employee, or vice versa. You cannot sign away these
rights through your contract, otherwise every employer would include that
clause in every employment contract and those minimum rights would be
rendered worthless.

Remember what we're talking here is *employment* law, not *contract* law.
Players are employees of their football clubs, not hired contractors.
Employment law is a subset of contract law. I wonder if, if the situation I
described ever transpired, whether an enterprising club would attempt to
have all it's players as independent contractors? If so, would it break any
statutes within FIFA?

Do salaried employees in the USA not generally have a contract of
employment? I find that hard to believe.

Huw

Oh.  If that's what we're talking about, we should add a big ol' [OT]
to this thread title.

OBFootball: Athletes don't sign contracts?  What is meant when they
'sign for n years'?

And when did Chimbonda say that he expects to just walk out on his
contract?
All he did was hand in a transfer request. I still fail to see the
crime in that.

You're right; I'm probably putting it too much into my situation.  In
the 3 times I've ever signed actual contracts for work, it was
specifically because the employer really needed a guarantee that I'd
stay on the job and it would've been sleazy if I up and left them.  I
guess my only remaining objection is to characterizing Whelan so badly;
I suppose it's possible there's not a contract involved (but I'd be
*really* surprised if it didn't), and in that case he would have
deserved what he got.But otherwise, I'd behave the same way in his
shoes.

We're talking about employment law in how it applies to footballers. I think
that's still on topic for this group.

Of course athletes sign contracts. *I* signed an employment contract. Didn't
you sign one? Contract law is a superset of employment law.

Huw

I suppose it's true; but the agreement that I signed (a) doesn't
specify any completion requirements and (b) says that either party can
terminate it given specific requirements.  The special cases that I
referred to previously were *really* contracts, they specified
completion requirements and very strict termination requirements.  I'd
have to assume athletes sign *these* agreements, otherwise why would
they even say it's a number of years?