By Tuesday, if the league and its players cannot come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement, it will finally drop, crushing the Tempo's plans for a home opener on May 8 against the Washington Mystics at Coca-Cola Coliseum in downtown Toronto. The league has circled March 10 as the drop-dead date by which a new CBA must be reached.
Very early estimates suggest the proposed cap (ceiling) might be set around the $260M-$280M range and the floor around $140M-$160M. I thought it worth reiterating those numbers because, after a week during which he would've been able to receive pushback, Heyman is reiterating them. So it's a good bet that they are the numbers that MLB's owners really do plan to open the discussions with.
We just try to worry about ourselves, and the fallout happens after that. It's just, the work stoppage thing; we don't know if that's going to happen. Look, we aren't adding any more fuel to that fire. If that happens, it was always going to happen, and it's not going to happen just because of us.
An arbitrator found that the report cards violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement by "disparaging NFL clubs and individuals." According to the memo, the arbitrator found through hearings with the NFLPA's witness and counsel that the report cards were "designed by the union to advance its interests under the guise of a scientific exercise." The NFLPA refused to produce data related to previous surveys, and the union's witness and counsel admitted the union "cherry-picked" topics and responses to include in the report cards.
That would ordinarily come with a $32.5MM average annual value that counts against the team's luxury tax ledger. In most cases, a contract's luxury tax number is taken by dividing the number of guaranteed years from the overall amount of guaranteed money - regardless of the salary distribution. Unlocked performance bonuses or option decisions can subsequently change the calculation, but the AAV is the starting point.
A third-party arbitrator has ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to walk back its return-to-office mandate for thousands of employees represented by one of its unions. Arbitrator Michael J. Falvo ruled on Monday that HHS must "rescind the return-to-office directive," and immediately reinstate remote work and telework agreements for members of the National Treasury Employees Union. HHS rescinded those workplace flexibility agreements early last year, after President Donald Trump ordered federal employees to return to the office full-time.
Major League Baseball owners are "raging" in the wake of Kyle Tucker's free agency agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers and it is now "a 100 percent certainty" that the owners will push for a salary cap, one person briefed on ownership conversations who was not authorized to speak publicly told The Athletic.
The main issues are focused on compensation and benefits for players on the lower end of the pay scale. Sources said that the union and the league have agreed on implementing a standard contract length of 12 months, instead of the 10 months stipulated by the previous CBA. This had been a sore spot for the USLPA given that being a professional soccer player is essentially a year-round job.
The 2022-26 collective bargaining agreement introduced the pre-arb bonus pool as a way for younger players to get paid earlier in their careers. Every team pays roughly $1.67MM into the pool, which adds up to a $50MM total. That money is then dispersed to pre-arb players, even if they have signed an early-career extension. In many cases, the pool is a greater source of income than a player's salary.
The deadline for teams to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players is this afternoon at 4pm CT. Throughout the day, we'll surely see a handful of arb-eligible players agree to terms with their clubs to avoid a hearing. These so-called 'pre-tender deals' usually, although not always, involve players who were borderline non-tender candidates. Rather than run the risk of being cut loose, they can look to sign in the lead-up to the deadline.
The WNBPA does not see the WNBA's latest collective bargaining agreement proposal as something that moves negotiations forward, sources told ESPN on Thursday, 10 days before the current CBA is set to expire. The league's proposal, first reported by the Associated Press and confirmed by ESPN, includes a revenue sharing component that, in combination with a base salary, would allow players to earn a maximum of more than $1.1 million, an average of more than $460,000 and a minimum of more than $220,000.
Within the last few years, the Rookie of the Year award has grown to have more meaning than it had in the past. Changes in the most recent collective bargaining agreement allow the award to bestow a full year of MLB service time on the top two finishers, even if they would have otherwise entered the offseason with less than that.
