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“The Pope” vs “The Don” – Players Union and League Square Off
Things are certainly getting interesting in the Collective Bargaining Agreement Negotiations….
Courtesy of the Sports Business Journal:
Major League Soccer players will strike next year if the league doesn’t improve on a collective-bargaining proposal it put forward last week that would increase player salaries but would reduce workers’ compensation benefits, player-side sources said.
Officials for Major League Soccer and the union declined comment. But sources noted that last week’s session was the first counterproposal by the league, and that there was still time for more bargaining. The MLS collective-bargaining agreement expires Jan. 31.
The counterproposal put forward by the league last week offered to raise the salary cap and address some of the union’s quality-of-life issues by increasing travel per diems and improving hotel accommodations, but the sides remain far apart on a host of issues, including the salary cap, workers’ compensation, guaranteed contracts, option-clauses in contracts and FIFA regulations.
One player-side source acknowledged that the league had offered to increase the salary cap and players’ salaries but called the proposed increases “a joke.”
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Gods, to be a fly on the wall, I need to know details!!!
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oh shit!
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strike would be pretty devastating for the league. not in the mls’ best interests here.
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It’s about to get real for real now!
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I can Bitch slap Don when he comes up the great Northwest for the cup, see if that cheapness out of him! To pussy this opportunity with the world cup and the growing league is criminal. Up the hard cap add a optional soft cap, and take the refs in house. Jeez use some of the expansion money you just raked in!!
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The players are gonna kill the league.
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There will not be a strike. Both sides know how destructive that would be. Here is a little tip for you kids, when in negotiation and you are prepared to pay X, don’t offer X first, you offer X-N and work your way up. Similarly, if you want X, you offer X+N and work your way down.
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Yeah, a strike’s the worst-case scenario for BOTH sides.
Can’t see it happening.
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I would rather see the players strike, than to continue with status quo, the players need to make decent wages in accordance with earnings and although the league says only about 4 teams are actually profitable, I think they only take into account ticket sales, but add tv rights fees, licensing fees, advertising, etc and the league as a whole are making money. Now I am not saying go crazy, cause we need to grow gradually, but I think the growth has been slow. I was at the HDC last night and the placed was packed, people love to see good quality players, so Don and MLS, invest a little more on the players, and you will see you earning grow accordingly, I think to take a calculated risk, I am convinced it will be rewarded.
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this might be the only instance where the replacement players are better than the original players.
i demand a 30 man roster and a reserve league.
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Double the cap you goof owners.
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I’ve been waiting my whole life to say this. Jesus…Shut the fuck up. The players ARE this league. The fact that a player is expected to survive on 15.3k a year is a joke. Garber’s dedication to his “Slow burn” policy of growth is more likely to kill the league than players expecting to receive travel per diem and LIVABLE wages.
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This is just bargaining but I’d hoped that the MLS would have been more forward thinking.
A strike would be idiotic but I’d rather have that than have the Don stifle the growth of the league by essentially forcing/keeping the best talent out of it. The whole lowest common denominator thing is getting old. If we have to wait until the last team is profitable before we release the stranglehold on the cap the MLS will not succeed.
Don should actually do his job and fix/move failing franchises rather than protecting them at the expense of the players and fans.
With this and his poor rationale for having two conferences I’m starting to wander just how far in the tank he is for the owners rather than his customers (us).
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Players deserve workers’ comp.
Period.
Furthermore, an increased salary cap is the single most necessary step in growing the game at this point. There’s almost unanimous agreement on that.
Remember that this isn’t just Garber here – guys like Kraft and Hunt The Younger are as much behind it as he is. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be that way. Hopefully, some of the newer owners with the weight of actual fan support (i.e., $$$) on their side will sway the issue.
“It’s not easy being an MLS player” – Drew Carey
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The players should get payed more when the league starts making a profit.
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cap is way too harsh. DP’s eating up disproprtional amounts of cap room also needs to be addressed.
hopefully the players dont budge and the Krafts and Kronkies of the league wake the fk up
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There is zero percent chance of a strike. Philly is in the league, New York a new stadium, it isn’t going to happen.
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Please raise the minimum salary from 20 to 40k. Full health insurance for all, 100% co-pay. $60 per diem, hotels must be 3 star. $5k min per game; 8 games is a full salary.
If you guys can afford DPs, you can afford to turn some of that cash towards the guys making 20k. That’s bullshit. I’m all for the crazy single-entity stuff, but if you can make more money at Wal*Mart, this league is broken.
I work at a non-profit. I make more money than a sizable amount of players. That SUCKS. I kinda hope they strike, or at least get something.
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STRIKE! STRIKE! No Pay, No Play! Players have my full support!
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I mostly think unions/strikes suck, but I would be 100 percent (if somewhat unhappy) behind a players strike. Rookie players don’t earn a living wage (which would be okay if MLS ponied up for housing) and the salarly cap is too low to attract/keep solid players, or to assemble a roster deep enough to play in the various competitions MLS has entered.
Pony up, Garber!
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“The players should get payed more when the league starts making a profit.”
Jesus:
1) How do you know they’re not making a profit as a league? Cuz Garber says so?
2) If you wait for every team to make money then what’s to stop Garber and greedy owners from keeping constantly underperforming markets so there’s never a laegue-wide profit.
3) What are they doing with the expansion fees, the increased merch sales, the transfer fees for Becks and others?
4) I pay a $35K sales rep more in per diem than the MLS pays its players. Players deserve to eat reasonably well and stay in better hotels than Fairfield’s and Hamptons.
5) I recommend The Beckham Experiemnt to every MLS fan. Forget the Beckham stuff. The real revelation is how cheap and low class the MLS really is in treatment of players. Never get seriously good players until that changes.
6) Jesus, loved your book too, especially all that begatting.
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Not that I don’t agree, but where is everyone getting their numbers?
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The players knew what they were getting into when they signed with MLS. If they don’t like it they should have gone to play in the USL or any foreign league. Or better yet they could try to find a job with their college degree in this current recession. I applaud the owners and Don Garber.
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Although the league gaurds numbers like Coke gaurds the formula, the consensus is that some of the individual owners/partners are turning a profit off the operation of their teams and some are not. However, each member of the single-entity owners group is making a notible profit outside of MLS off of Soccer United Marketing (SUM) which handles marketing and broadcasting of soccer across the U.S. and a few other countries. Any owner can, if they feel so compelled, flip but a portion of their cut of the SUM profits to cover any red ink they have over the operation of their MLS franchise.
SUM is the financial foundation that ensures the fiscal survival of MLS. It also takes away any claim of poverty on the part of owner/partners.
Bump the salary cap 50 to 100 percent already, and don’t start cutting benefits for Chrissakes.
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Management is killing this League! Don’t blame the union for wanting to improve their standard of living, don’t you dare. The players are in the trenches every week, their pay is a JOKE, their per diems are a joke and their motel rooms are bare bones. When the League brass travels do you think they lodge in the same Spartan manner as their players? No, they don’t. It sounds like Management is removed from the Player’s experience in the MLS, and only sees it’s athletes as numbers in a spreadsheet. If the Union strikes, I’ll be with them.
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If the owners lock out the players, or try and buy newer but cheaper ones– hard to believe they could–then the league is doomed depending on how long the strike goes. It took MLB years to recover from their strike and people like me never went back to the game. Even the mighty NFL is quaking in their boots over coming negotiations. For the MLS to not get this settled would be suicide for all those concerned.
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I will be completely behind the players if this happens. They deserve everything they are asking for
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The league needs a better revenue sharing system if Colorado, Dallas, RSL, etc are not going to be relocated to cities that give a damn. The Galaxy and Red Bulls are worth a fortune, but most clubs are not worth the expansion fee. MLS is increasing branded products, which should generate revenue, but the quantity of random crap with a Philly or Seattle logo will greatly outnumber the sales in other markets.
Also, if you are a small market and don’t have a kit sponsor I have less sympathy for your cause.
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its just the beggining stages of negotiating.. Naturally the MLS aka the Don is going to low ball the union… And the union is going to look for everything under the sun to get the Don to up his bids.. The fact in point here is that we, and i mean we as a collective of the beautiful game in North America want to see proper wages delt out to the low to mid tier players… Points to take note of.. The recession has chewed some bargaining ground out of the players yet the MLS has grown by strides and bounds with the newer clubs paying out almost 40 million in expansion fees.. The league would fold if there was ever a strike in 2010 yet becuase of the world cup the MLS front office might find it efficient a time to curb the union uprising.. The great demise of this situation is that the fan would be the one most to lose and with the ever increasing attention being put on the MLS as of late it would be a cut that would possibly not have a proper bandage.. I hope for the sake of all that they negotiate a less long term agreement and try to do this again in a couple of years once all the economic woes fade from the picture.. I do agree that 20k does not allow a player to focus on his skills and evolution as a pro in the sport. Yet i also find it hard that for a league just getting up to profitability to have to dull out all kinds of extras .. just maybe we can get the mid to high level players that are being payed a pretty penny to play can be the ones to shell out thier own insurance .Its just a suggestion… how much would a soccer pro have to dish out if they were looking out for thier own insurance.. 5k to maybe 20k and when your making well over 200k sounds reasonable to me.. Just making ideas to help out …
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There are actually three parties involved: players, execs, and the FANS. We shall and wont be ignored. That is why im sure no strike will ever happen. MLS does not have the foundation to ever recover from a full strike given the momentum it has going into next year (Red Bull Arena, Philly, trying to get the host privileges of the World CUp.
I will be happy with both parties if the following are done:
1) Cap is at least doubled to around $5 million
2) Minimum salary is boosted to 50K (given the large amount of additional overall salary cap increase and since 45k is easily livable)
3) additional DP is implemented where it does not apply to the cap
4) Roster is increased to 30 spots
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Supsam, ur first two requests are just hilarious, they dont have a chance in hell. Why dont u just ask for ten mil and one hundred thou while ur at it?… hopefully the CBA provides for gradual increases in salary cap, minimum wage and roster size over the life of the deal. Hey, I’d love to have tens of millions or even a 4-5 mil cap to, but it aint gonna happen. The increase in the cap on this round of negotiations needs to reflect an increasing roster size and league min. After the league focuses on ironing out these important issues they can work on getting bigger name players the next time. Sorry to say it. Of particular importance is the league min… besides that, players deserve more. come on Don, you are better than this, ur the best commish in sports, treat ur employees w/ respect
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@ RecsFan,
I wouldnt exactly say that they are “hilarious”. I remember reading somewhere where owners from LA and Seattle wouldnt mind substantially increasing the cap (of course thats not the majority view).
Again, i said id be happy if it happened. A MLS fan can dream cant he?
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i mean Revsfan not Recsfan haha my bad
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Nothing pisses me off more than Drew Carey and Co. NOT being able to spend THEIR OWN FRECKIN’ MONEY on a team that is making close to the same, or more than our 100mil baseball team next door. We could keep Montero if they let us. I want a soft cap! Hunt and Kraft can flounder in cheap mediocrity for all I care. And I think Kronke would support that too if he could use his Billions for good use.
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I wish that we could see the financials, because we really don’t have enough information to make decent arguments.
I do know this though. The clubs that are turning a profit generally want to increase the cap. They will eventually get mad at the clubs that are in the red and the league will have to do something.
Maybe the profitable clubs will keep the league in business, but it just doesn’t make sense from a business perspective to hold onto clubs that can’t become profitable.
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ADF – why would you say RSL needs to be moved? They average close to 20k a game. That’s better than most of the league.
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PLEASE DONT GO ON STRIKE WHATEVER YOU DO DONT GO ON STRIKE
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