Harrison “Harry” Shipp was born and raised in Lake Forest, Ill., a suburb of Chicago where the mean household income is nearly $269,000. Shipp’s father, Terry, works in private equity, and if not for his soccer talent, Harry — a finance major at Notre Dame — probably would have ended up in a similar field.



Shipp’s background, in other words, does not exactly scream “union representative.”



Yet it is Shipp who will represent the Sounders at the bargaining table when the MLS players’ union and the league’s owners meet in the coming weeks to hash out a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) before the season kicks off on Feb. 29th. Understanding his personal journey can provide valuable insight into the state of Major League Soccer’s labor movement, and how one’s perspective can shift based on experience and circumstance.



Shipp volunteered to get involved with the union straight out of...