NISA not paying their referees...again

For the second straight season, referees are having tremendous difficulty getting paid for work done on NISA games.

The National Independent Soccer Association was founded in 2017 and began play in 2019 in the third (or fourth depending on who is asked) tier of professional American soccer. The league currently consists of nine teams, with two more set join in 2024. While some may laud the independent nature of the teams, the league has not been without its issues.

Several teams went on hiatus after their respective inaugural seasons while others have left the NISA altogether for the greener pastures of the USL Championship in the second division of American professional soccer. But perhaps most concerning is that for the second straight season, referees have gone unpaid for their work on NISA games.

Peter Manikowski is the President of the PSRA (Professional Soccer Referee Association) which is an association of current, former, and aspiring professional referees who have come together in an effort to improve the refereeing conditions for professional leagues in the US and Canada. They were started in 2009 and were certified as a labor union in 2013 by the National Labor Relations Board. On September 29th of this year, they released a statement expressing their concern at the NISA having failed to pay referees what they are owed.

This is not the first time that the NISA has fallen behind in their payments to the referees that are working their games, as Manikowski explains.

“The issues on pay, and I want to be clear on this: pay and travel expenses and per diem for food and whatever. The timeliness on payments has been an issue since the league was formed, but ultimately they were resolved. In 2022 there was an issue where the pay and travel expenses were not reimbursed for approximately four or five months. At the time our best estimate was something like $18,000 of outstanding wages that had to be paid, plus applicable travel expenses. We finally got those resolved in December of 2022 after a lot of pressure from the PSRA, from US Soccer, and other organizations as well. At the time it covered at least 30 referees who were affected last year.”

To be fair, Manikowski does point out that when referees are being reimbursed for expenses and pay from any league, a certain amount of delay is expected.

“Don’t get me wrong. It happens.” he says. “But what we saw was, in 2022, a delay which ultimately ended up being four or five months and in some cases longer. And it was a structural issue at the NISA that caused that. It wasn’t processing this and that. It was a real structural problem that they were facing which took nearly half a year to resolve.”

Manikowski says that the general expectation among referees is for reimbursement to take around 30 days from the day the expense report is submitted to the appropriate league office.

“That’s no so uncommon. Obviously some people like their money faster and it’s good when they are reimbursed faster but 30 days from the submission of the report is appropriate.”

The NISA assured the PSRA, Manikowski says, that all issues regarding referee payments had been resolved. But at this moment in time, that is not the case, as Manikowski attests to.

“Well so after the 2022 season we were told that the structural issues were fixed and that the money would flow correctly and on time and that all the paperwork would be done in advance and that these types of issues, expect for maybe a one-off, wouldn’t exist. For the first couple months of the season the money flowed appropriately, with an issue here or there but generally ok. Now that we’ve come into the end of the season it’s changed very much. We have issues since July now we believe.”

Just how many referees have been impacted this year? And how much are they still owed? Manikowski says that as of October 4th, they have been able to confirm a total of 12 affected referees being owed approximately $4,000. Manikowski also points out, that this figure only includes referees who are in the PSRA and does yet not include any referees who are non-PSRA members meaning “that the number is substantially larger than that.”

It’s also worth noting that these numbers continue to accrue with each passing day. Manikowski explains.

“And I want to say that for each day that goes by, there are more matches being done for which pay is not being given. Because this league is still playing matches.”

So the issues of pay being late or not being there at all have been established. What steps has the PSRA taken to resolve this issue once and for all?

“So we are working in collaboration with US Soccer on this point. We have encouraged US Soccer to pay the referees out of the performance bond that NISA put up at the beginning of the season. I don’t know the amount of that performance bond but we’ve asked US Soccer to pay the money directly from the bond right now to the referees.”

And should these issues not be resolved and referees continue to go unpaid, the NISA could very well find themselves in a place where they can’t get anybody to referee their games.

“Going forward, we’ve been sending stronger and stronger messages to the officials saying, ‘Be very careful about the matches you accept.’ On the acceptance of the work, the officials have to be very careful about the work that they are accepting. And the track record here seems to indicate that if you need the payment for the matches, then perhaps it’s better to select a different match to work that day if you have options. And we’re not by any means suggesting that the league be boycotted or some other system like that but each referee has to look at his or her own schedule and decide what actions to take.”

But as Manikowski points out, that’s not the only remedy for referees who remain unpaid by the NISA.

“I want to reiterate also that we’ve informed our members that if they’re not paid for wages and you think your wages are being stolen, those officials need to go to the state of wherever the match occurred and potentially file a complaint with the state Department of Labor because that’s what those state Departments of Labor are for.”

Manikowski then addresses the part of the PSRA statement which calls for US Soccer to reexamine the sanctioning for the NISA as a professional league.

“Our idea over here is that if NISA is going to be sanctioned for the 2024 season, that US Soccer really take a hard look at not only if they’re going to sanction that league at all but into which part of the pyramid they fall. Because, of course the referees are interested in refereeing matches but also in advancing their referee careers and where a league falls in the pyramid of soccer is a factor that the referees consider in taking that work or not.

I point out that we as referees want as many matches out there as possible. We want soccer to be played every day in every corner of the United States and Canada, right? But there are limits. Which is to say that if you make a commitment to play the game, then the referees be compensated accordingly. And that’s the issue that we have over here. We’re not looking to cut off a league by any means. We just want to make sure that if you make the commitment to play that you pay the referees on the other end.”

And what does the NISA have to say about all this? Will it be fixing these issues and will they be able to prevent them from happening again? When reached for comment, their Communications Specialist, Steve Johnson, had the following to says:

Here’s to hoping that they are indeed able to get fully aligned sooner rather than later and are able to get the referees paid in full.