U.S. Women’s Hockey Team May Boycott World Championships in Michigan
USA Hockey to meet with reps of national women’s team over wage dispute. Players threaten to skip World Championship.
Officials with USA Hockey are meeting with representatives of the national women’s team today in an attempt to prevent a threatened boycott of the World Championships, which are slated to be held at the end of this month in Plymouth.
Members of the women’s hockey team say they will sit out the World Championships to protest what they call unfair wages.
Players say they only made about $1,000 a month from USA Hockey in 2014, and that was only for the six months before the Olympics.
The team says there’s not much chance of making that up as professionals, where women hockey players are paid only a fraction of what men earn.
USA Hockey says it offered the women an annual salary, plus a bonus if they win a gold medal in the World Championships.
But officials claim the players instead want hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Attorneys for the women’s team call that “patently false.”
USA Hockey vows to bring in replacement players for the World Championships if an agreement cannot be reached.
