Our collective hearts broke last week when nearly 100 U.S. elite women's gymnasts — including many famous Olympians — shared their personal accounts of being sexually abused by their team doctor, Lawrence G. Nassar. Since then, USA Gymnastics has attempted to turn the page on these tragic events by terminating its training agreement with the Karolyi Ranch in Huntsville, Texas. Meanwhile, Dr. Nassar is likely to receive a lengthy prison sentence.
Nevertheless, there is still a bona fide risk that another tragedy of this nature could occur in USA Gymnastics unless there are real structural changes to the relationship between the organization and its young athletes.
Perhaps one of the more meaningful ways to protect the interests of young, female gymnasts would be for the U.S. women's national gymnastics team to unionize — thus affording these gymnasts with bona fide representation separate and apart from the private and commercial entity known as USA Gymnastics.
There are a number of reasons that the culture of USA Gymnastics, without a players' union or similar external structure, remains susceptible to another sexual predator going undetected.
First, although the U.S. gymnastics team is called a "women's team," many of the top gymnasts compete on the elite level at ages as young as 15. At this tender age, some gymnasts might not fully understand the nature of their abuser's grooming behaviors, and thus may miss the warning sides. At the same time, some athletes may lack the verbal skills and confidence to explain these inappropriate behaviors to the appropriate authorities.
Secondly, Olympic hopeful gymnasts — much like some child actors and entertainers — spend substantial time in an environment where achieving stardom is seen as critical to maintaining self-esteem, both personally and for their families. In this environment, even some gymnasts who recognize the horrible wrongdoing of a sexual predator may still fail to report the wrongdoing in fear of suffering retaliation in the form of lost career opportunities.
Finally, there is sadly a monetary interest for the coaches and supervisors of the U.S. women's national gymnastics team to keep sexual abuse scandals internal. This does not mean that every administrator and coach would turn a blind eye to such abuse. But much as in the sexual abuse scandal involving youth football at Penn State University, there are growing reports that at least some coaches and administrators failed to take reasonable steps to protect gymnasts from sexual abuse.
While there is no effective way to absolutely prevent the arrival of another sexual predator within U.S. gymnastics, at least with the creation of a union there would be an outside body, overseen by adults, with a non-conflicted legal interest to protect the well-being of the young gymnasts. While many Americans associate unions with bargaining solely for salaries, unions have also had powerful effects in changing the working conditions in many industries — especially where workers, for a variety of factors, have appeared relatively powerless.
Even though the National Labor Relations Board declined in recent years to recognize the Northwestern University grant-in-aid football players as an official bargaining unit to negotiate against their college over terms and conditions of employment, a bargaining unit consisting of Olympic athletes might have a better chance at garnering the labor board's favorable review.
This is because the ultimate reason that the National Labor Relations Board failed to recognize a Northwestern football union was because it believed it would hamper labor stability in college football given that many of Northwestern's rival football teams were public universities and thus purportedly lied outside the National Labor Relations Board's jurisdiction.
The labor stability approach, however, would not be a strong argument to prevent the elite U.S. women's gymnasts from unionizing. Unlike the National Collegiate Athletic Association, USA Gymnastics is a singular, private and commercial actor that financially benefits from the services of the U.S. elite women's gymnasts and exercises extreme day-to-day control over their actions.
Meanwhile, from a public policy perspective, after the most recent recent sexual abuse perpetrated against many elite American gymnasts, it would be very hard for any reasonable person to deny that the U.S. women's national gymnastics team needs all the legal protections imaginable. That, of course, would include an athletes' union.
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Marc Edelman (Marc@MarcEdelman.com) is a Professor of Law at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business and the founder of Edelman Law. He is the author of "A Short Treatise on Amateurism and Antitrust Law." In addition, his article, “The Future of College Athlete Players Unions,” appears in Volume 38 of Cardozo Law Review.
