Australian Athletes' Alliance General Secretary Brendan Schwab said that National Rugby League players and their counterparts in other codes would "benefit from having the details of their contracts publicly listed," according to Brad Walter of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. The wages of players in most major U.S. sporting competitions are "readily accessible to the public" and Schwab believes Australian sports players "should follow suit." While players unsuccessfully attempted to stop the publication of their wages from court documents during the Super League "war" and A-League players have a clause in their contracts requiring clubs to keep the details confidential, Schwab said that such a move would "ensure transparency in negotiations and make salary cap breaches less likely." Schwab said, "Information is power in any negotiation, especially in a salary cap environment, and in the absence of full disclosure it is the clubs that are in the position to assert salary cap compliance in order to achieve the outcomes they want." Schwab stressed that he was "expressing a personal view and not that of the AAA," which represents more than 3,500 athletes through the players' associations in the A-League, Australian Football League, Rugby Union, football, cricket, netball and basketball, as well as jockeys, but said he had been "privately pushing the issue for years." He added that it was a "topic of discussion" at a recent exec meeting of UNI World Athletes, of which Schwab is VP. Schwab: "The National Hockey League players' association were there and they are one of the more recent groups to agree to this in North America, and they were speaking about how advantageous it had been for the players" (SMH, 4/13).
