MLS Collective Bargaining: Reality Bites
2009-11-09 11:23:00
Yesterday the first news from the MLS collective bargaining negotiations leaked out, courtesy of Tripp Mickle. Sport Business Journal put the news behind the paywall, but thankfully Jason Davis scaled it so I don't have to:Though the league has proposed a salary cap increase, the players have labelled it a "joke". The cap would increase in single-digit percentage increments in the league's proposal . . .
WVHooligan also transcribed a bit of the article:
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.
I can't say I'm at all surprised. Anyone who thought the players were going to waltz into negotiations and get all sorts of concessions coupled with the owners doubling or tripling the salary cap was fooling themselves. Indeed, today BigSoccer is filled with fantasies about ownership groups in open warfare with each other and not being able to hold down the players anymore.
Davis and Epperley play up the possibility of a strike, but I'm not sure it's at all likely. We know that the relations between the players and owners are not good, but what would striking accomplish? What would the players hope to win?
Let's give some context to the players' grievances in the form of the Eric Brunner and Pat Noonan sagas. Brunner was drafted and signed to a contract by New York, then had his contract revoked and was offered a developmental deal for about $30,000 a year less. Not being able to do anything about it, he toiled for a year in USL before the Crew could acquire his rights. Similarly, when Noonan's contract with the Revs came up, he was lowballed, and went to play in Scandanavia instead. Meanwhile, other MLS teams wanted to sign him, mainly the Crew, but MLS refused to approve the deal out of spite.
These are the sorts of reasons the players want guaranteed contracts and a change in how options based contracts operate in MLS. The idea being that it's patently unfair for players to get yanked around like Brunner and Noonan on a regular basis. The end game of all this is full on free agency and the associated rise in salaries that would surely bring.
Since the owners are unlikely to cave on the way contracts are structured, the question then becomes whether the players can extract some sort of concessions to deal with issues like these. An agreement that players offered full contracts can't then be busted down to developmental sounds good, but without some kind of guarantee on the contract, nothing prevents MLS from straight cutting that player. Right now I can't think of how this one can be addressed more narrowly, but I the owners need to make a genuine effort to prevent players getting shafted like this in the future.
Regarding the Noonan situation, I'd like to see the role of the central office consigned to making sure all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed in player deals between teams as opposed to having the power to hold up player transfers simply because it doesn't like how much the player is getting paid. If there's no salary cap or roster issues, letting deals like Noonan's go through more smoothly would introduce some much-needed flexibility into the MLS player market without giving away the keys to the castle. Any lawyer types out there feel free to point out how wrong I am.
The bottom line is if MLS can offer some tightly worded compromises on issues like these, I don't see the players going to the wall for fully guaranteed contracts and free agency. But I don't also see much movement at all on the salary floor the owners have offered. All the league needs to do is point at the modest gains in attendance and sponsorships (and in some cases whopping losses) despite having Seattle in the league. The players are going to get at least 48 more members over the course of this agreement, and I think that's about the best they could hope for. If the players win a salary floor or roster increase of 15% or more in addition to that, it would be an upset of Salt Lakean magnitude.
A lot of people seem to think that it's in the owners best interests to give up a lot now so there isn't a strike that could fold the league. But remember that Forbes article on MLS's most valuable teams from last September? All told, it showed a cumulative operating deficit of $20 million. Let's assume that number is in the ball park. Let's even be generous and assume that it doesn't include about $2 million per team in money from SUM and TV rights. If those are anywhere close to the actual numbers, I don't think the owners have a lot of incentive to cave.
There's too much at stake for either side to drag this out beyond January. The players may be mad, but they just don't have much leverage - and yet the owners need to address some very big underlying issues. We may see a strike, but if we do I think it will be short. The likeliest scenario is that there will be a lot of horror stories in the news up to the 11th hour and something will get signed.
We should know a lot more about the state of the owners groups after the board of governors meeting at MLS Cup, and that will go a long way toward handicapping the endgame of negotiations.
Fake Sigi out.
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