Athletes’ rights in the WWE
The world of professional wrestling is a world like no other. Larger-than-life characters, steel cages, chair shots and falls through wooden tables epitomize the spectacle the WWE has — rightly or wrongly — labelled ‘sports entertainment’.
Of course, ‘sports entertainment’ is predetermined. The plight of WWE athletes in modern times, however, remains painstakingly real.
In contrast to major sporting organisations across the US, athletes engaged by the WWE are not protected by a player’s union. Indeed, such athletes are not WWE ‘employees’ at all — they are ‘independent contractors’.
This classification carries many of the concerns now at the forefront of Australian labour law following the High Court’s decisions in Personnel Contracting and Jamsek in early 2022.
Under Australian federal labour legislation, ‘employee’ is undefined. Accordingly, the distinction between what constitutes an ‘employee’ — as opposed to a ‘private contractor’ — is left to the common law.
Non-employee workers are unprotected by the National Employment Standards entrenched within the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (‘FWA’). This includes an array of leave entitlements. Also enjoyed only by ‘employees’ are thresholds on maximum weekly working hours, entitlements to redundancy pay and sections providing for minimum wages and equal remuneration.
Alike issues in the US have, and continue to, manifest themselves in the WWE.
WWE athletes are, subject to some exceptions, responsible for their own travel expenses. This is so irrespective of the fact that they may be scheduled to perform at 3-4 shows weekly, typically in different US cities, for up to 300 days yearly. Former WWE Superstar Ryback Allen Reeves was ‘shocked that there have not been any deaths’ flowing from the use of rental cars for ‘gruelling’ travel between events as he described wrestler’s ancillary role within the WWE as ‘professional driver[s]’.
As was the case for the plaintiffs in Jamsek, statutorily entrenched compensation related to travel is unavailable to WWE wrestlers owing to their classification as independent contractors under domestic law.
Paul Levesque, better known as ‘Triple H’, is one of the WWE’s most well-known figures. In accordance with Levesque’s former performer’s contract, the WWE reserved nigh exclusive merchandising and intellectual property rights over the ‘Triple H’ character in perpetuity. Levesque could not undertake wrestling works for any other company during his term of engagement. Levesque was, solely, fiscally responsible for food and nutrition, training and non-airline travel expenses. The WWE was excepted from compensating Levesque for any injuries incurred while performing notwithstanding any negligence on WWE’s behalf while the WWE did not provide health insurance coverage.
All this was so while Levesque was, and remains to be, the son-in-law of WWE’s then-owner and now-chairperson Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
Both in the ‘real’ world — and in a world that remains something less than real — non-employee working conditions continue to pose a risk to the personal, fiscal and physical wellbeing of those across the globe.