MLS never finalized 2010- 14 labour agreement
Turns out Major League Soccer never had a finalized labour contract for the last five years, a situation players and management hope to rectify following their agreement in principle last week on a new deal through 2019.
The new labour agreement increases minimum salaries but cuts the roster size of each team from 30 to 28. The union says the last few players on each side never saw much time on the field.
Players and the league reached a memorandum of understanding five days before the 2010 season opener but never took the time to draft a full collective bargaining agreement.
Management and the union instead operated under the memorandum of understanding they signed, which in labour negotiations lists the modifications the sides agree will be made to their previous contract.
“There were dozens of little things in the conversion that would have been required, and neither side ever took the time to get the other to sit down and actually do it. It was that simple. It wasn’t all that important,” L. Robert Batterman, the league’s lead labour lawyer at Proskauer, said on Wednesday. “This time, to avoid the risk of being in a situation with a CBA from 10 years ago and then two MOUs, we’re going straight to the CBA.”
The union website still has a link to the 2004- 10 agreement, the first in the league’s history.
“It’s frustrating for all concerned,” union head Bob Foose said. As for what the sides agreed to in 2010, he added: “We know. Without the document, everyone else doesn’t.”
A similar circumstance occurred in Major League Baseball from 1985- 89, when teams and players operated under the 1980 labour contract as modified by their 1981 agreement on free- agent compensation and their 1985 MOU. In baseball, the sides couldn’t agree on some aspects of what was in the MOU.
Last week’s MLS deal, reached two days before the league opener, creates free agency for the first time. Players 28 and older can become free agents if they have eight seasons of MLS service and their contracts have expired.