Marquette Sports Law Review Volume 29 Article 4 Issue 1 Fall New Bargaining Order: How and Why Professional Wrestlers in the WWE Should Unionize Under the National Labor Relations Act Geoff Estes Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw Part of the Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons, and the Labor and Employment Law Commons Repository Citation Geoff Estes, New Bargaining Order: How and Why Professional Wrestlers in the WWE Should Unionize Under the National Labor Relations Act, 29 Marq. Sports L. Rev. 137 (2018) Available at: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/sportslaw/vol29/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ESTES ARTICLE 29.1 (DO NOT DELETE) 12/11/18 1:05 PM NEW BARGAINING ORDER: HOW AND WHY PROFESSIONAL WRESTLERS IN THE WWE SHOULD UNIONIZE UNDER THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT GEOFF ESTES* I. INTRODUCTION In May of 1999, the WWE, then known as the WWF, had a storyline play out on their weekly episodic live television show, Monday Night RAW. It concerned the wrestlers staging a labor uprising in an attempt to be able to unionize.1 While this was a ploy by the WWE to cast the “faces” (“the good guys”) as blue-collar, hard-working performers whom were constantly being held down unfairly by the “heels” (“the bad guys”) in the corporation, it introduced to the WWE audience a very real issue concerning the health and well-being of WWE wrestlers.2 Although this was a “work,” meaning a scripted promo, it was also a window into tensions and feelings that were very real backstage at WWE events.