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UNI Apro participants in Kuala Lumpur showed their full support for UNI World Athletes and its vision to protect the “dignity of the athlete” and reestablish the “essence of sport”.

The participants at the 4th UNI APRO Regional Conference gave their full backing by adopting the motion presented by Head of UNI World Athletes, Brendan Schwab.

Schwab asked the participants to condemn governance crisis in sport at international and regional levels, the widespread abuse of the rights of professional athletes as workers and the lack of respect for international human rights and labour standards in connection with mega-sporting events such as the World Cup in Qatar.

Schwab said, “Professional athletes are workers too and should be afforded the same rights as workers. We must organise and grown our unions in sport to achieve our goals.”

Quoting US attorney Jeffrey Kessler, Schwab explained that a just system athletes was beneficial to sport:

“What history has taught us is that there’s no inconsistency between having a fair system for players and having a healthy sport. Quite the contrary. What we’ve seen is that when sports have given players more freedom and have compensated them better the entire sport has grown on the revenue side. The players and the clubs can work together to build the sport much more easily in a fair system than in an unfair system.”  (Leading US attorney Jeffrey Kessler, 2014)

Schwab then called on the testimony of three leaders in sports that have successfully organized and grown union membership:

Kathryn Gill, Player Relations Executive, PFA (women’s football, Australia)

Jannis Silitonga, Lawyer, APPI (men’s football, Indonesia)

Tadahito Mori, Executive Director, JPBPA (men’s baseball, Japan)