Professional Footballers' Association
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| Full name | Professional Footballers' Association |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1907 |
| Members | 4000 |
| Affiliation | TUC, GFTU, FEU, FIFPro |
| Key people | Gordon Taylor, chief executive |
| Country | England and Wales, United Kingdom |
| Website | www.thepfa.com |
The Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) is the trade union for professional association footballers in England and Wales. The world's oldest professional sport trade union, it has 4,000 members.
The aims of the PFA are to protect, improve and negotiate the conditions, rights and status of all professional players by collective bargaining agreements.
The PFA is affiliated with the Professional Footballers' Association Scotland. The Northern Ireland PFA disbanded in 1995.
The PFA was formed on 2 December 1907 as the Association of Football Players' and Trainers' Union (the AFPTU, commonly referred to at the time as the Players' Union). On that date, Charlie Roberts and Billy Meredith (who had been involved in the AFU), both of Manchester United, convened the Players' Union at Manchester’s Imperial Hotel.
This was the second attempt to organise a union of professional footballers in England, after the Association Footballers' Union (the "AFU"), formed in 1898, had been dissolved in 1901. The AFU had failed in its objectives of bringing about a relaxation of the restrictions on the movement of players from one club to another in the Football League and preventing the introduction of a maximum wage of £4 per week for players in the Football League.
Like the AFU before it, the Players' Union intended to challenge the maximum wage and the restriction on transfers, in the form of the "retain and transfer" system.
When the Players' Union made its objectives clear in 1909, the Football Association withdrew its recognition of the Union, which at that time was seeking to join the U.K.'s General Federation of Trade Unions (‘GFTU’).
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