Pregnant soccer player Sara Gunnarsdottir wins lawsuit with Lyon over back wages – Corriere.it

Market hit Juventus last summer, Sara Björk Gunnarsdottir yesterday, Tuesday 17 January 2023, he celebrated a huge win. The 32-year-old Icelandic midfielder scored a metaphorical goal against her former club il Lyon (a battleship from 8 Champions Leagues, a Women’s Club World Cup and 19 French championships): will receive the arrears for the pregnancy of 2021. And, from the pages of The Players’ Tribunetells his story in the first person. “What Happened When I Got Pregnant”the article is titled.

Maternity leave and wage cuts

In the text, she summarizes her story, which ended very well: Gunnarsdottir had reached Lyon in the summer of 2020 and discovered she was pregnant the following March. It was the first case of an Olympique player pregnant with her, so she was concerned and she took her time before announcing her pregnancy, continuing to play. She was then, of course, exempt from competitive activity even though she continued to train in Iceland. Finally, he discovered that he had received only small percentages of salaries (less than 30,000 euros compared to the 111,000 expected between April and September), while from December 2020 the Fifa regulation provides for the full pay of the entire salary for the duration of the pregnancy until the leave of maternity

The appeal and the victory

From here, supported by the players’ union (Fifpro), she had appealed to Fifa, obtaining reason with a historic sentence. Now Lyon have renounced the appeal, and therefore will pay Gunnarsdottir over 80,000 euros in arrears.

Little Ragnar Frank

Meanwhile, in November 2021 she became the mother of a boy, Ragnar Frankhad together with his partner Arni Vilhjalmsson, himself a footballer and former Icelandic international.

The story: “I was happy, but I also felt guilty: it was unnerving”

In his long article Gunnarsdottir also recounts his feelings, from the joy of arriving at battleship Lyon («the best players in each country, good salaries and good conditions as a priority as much as victory… When I turned professional I clearly told my agent : I want Wolfsburg and Lyon», and he played with both), the victory in the Champions League, with a goal in the final, the discovery of the pregnancy: “At first I just felt joy, then reality hit me. For a long time in Europe it was not very normal for a player to get pregnant. There has been progress, but culture is still culture. I hadn’t planned the pregnancy, but I never thought for a second that I wasn’t going to have the baby. But I still felt guilty about something, like I was letting people down. It was unnerving.” In agreement with the club doctor, he kept the secret.

Salaries and contributions cut, the human disinterest of Lyon

The problems come with nausea and with a match against PSG in which Gunnarsdottir didn’t feel like entering the field at halftime. “At that point I knew I had to tell my teammates (and the coach, ed) the truth. I felt that in this club at this level, if you can’t train 100% then you shouldn’t train. And a week later I told everyone. It was funny, some were so shocked. Then, once the news was absorbed, everyone was happy». The common decision to stop, the return to Iceland also to avoid risks with Covid, the promise to return to Lyon after giving birth. «I was happy and with so much to do, I didn’t have time to worry about my salaries. I had no reason to think anything was wrong. Until the first paycheck: there was only a part of the social security contributions. I believed in a mistake. But then I checked with the colleagues, and they had been paid regularly. And then it happened again…” An exchange of mails and the legal dispute follow. With the warning from Lyon: “If Sara turns to Fifa, she no longer has a future here.” “I was shocked and, honestly, hurt. How can a team get away with this without discussion or negotiation? All I wanted was to enjoy my pregnancy and work my ass off to get back to helping the team afterward. And I felt confused and stressed and betrayed.” No one looked for her either before or after the birth, none of her employers checked her condition. They ignored her.

Return and differential treatment

On maternity leave since early April, in January 2022 Gunnarsdottir was back in Lyon, this time with Arni and Ragnar. “I’ll be honest, I wanted to tell them how mad I was and they made me feel bad, then walk away. But I promised myself to do everything 110%. Instead, I was treated differently: they made me feel negatively that I was having a baby. I was being told not to take him away as it was annoying in case he cried, and I was still breastfeeding. In the end they offered me two trips as a test, but I declined. I would never have put Ragnar and myself in that situation, there was no understanding and I knew it.” From there, the meeting with the company and «the president (Jean-Michel Aulas, ed) entered the room, it was the first time he had seen me since his return, and he didn’t even greet me», and the awareness that, whatever it was, she would have no future in Lyon as a mother.

“Rights of a worker, a woman, a human being”

Now, the officiality of the sentence and the payment of the arrears: «which are part of my rights, and are not even in question by such a big club. That’s why I write this: it’s a much more important victory than me. I feel like a guarantee for all players who want to have children during their career. It’s not a “maybe” or an “I don’t know”. I’m at Juventus now and I’m very happy. But I want to make sure that no one has to go through this process ever again. And that Lyon knows it’s not good, that it’s not “just business”. They are the rights of a worker, a woman and a human being. There’s a lot to celebrate. The stadiums, the investments, the level of the game, the fans who fill the stadiums? We made it. It is undeniable. But the reality is that, coming to global culture, there is still a lot to do. We deserve better.”