CHL hypocrisy over its ‘student-athletes’
Canadian junior hockey players are paid — but far too little
If, in fact, one of Georges Laraque’s spokesmen for the fledgling Canadian Hockey League’s Players Association Derek Clarke turns out to be somebody named Randy Gumbley who has been convicted of fraud with hockey endeavours of the past, it will be but a temporary setback.
At some point, all these apologists for what goes on in the junior hockey are going to have to face the fact that this union’s cause is just, and that conditions within the CHL need to be improved in so many ways.
What has become clear in this latest series of events — which began with a former junior player with the Halifax Mooseheads Joshua Desmond filing suit in Nova Scotia alleging he’s owed back pay due to the fact he wasn’t paid minimum wage, holiday pay or severance when he played — is that the CHL has gone into considerable contortions to protect the status quo.
And that status quo is that kids aged 16 to 20 work long and hard hours for as little as $50 bucks a week, and they are not only denied minimum wage, they get no holiday or severance pay, and the conditions for their university tuition which is supposed to be paid for once they leave junior hockey are far too stringent.
The CHLPA simply wants to get sufficient leverage exerted on the league to force them to negotiate on some of these issues.
If they were really being destructive, there would be a class-action suit launched for back pay owed all former players of CHL teams based on the minimum wage standards of the province they played in, a move that might well bankrupt the league if successful.
At the very least, it would reduce the outrageous sums these franchises — oh, pardon me — these educational institutions, sell for when they exchange hands.
That’s right, one of the contortions CHL commissioner Dave Branch has been pushed to in order to defend what goes on was to claim Thursday that they (junior teams) consider their players student-athletes.
“We look upon our players as student athletes,” he told the Toronto Star.
“We’ve never considered ourselves professional. We are under Hockey Canada, which is the recognized amateur sports governing body.”
There are all manner of disturbing aspects to this claim. If these are student athletes, why are they being paid anything at all? Do high schools or university teams pay their players?
If these “student-athletes” are enrolled in the CHL, what educational institutions has conditions whereby when students leave at any time they are ineligible to attend and play sports in any NCAA school in the U. S.?
If you were really concerned about your “student-athletes,” wouldn’t you adjust your conditions so that they were, in fact, eligible to go on to higher education at such institutions?
And if Dave Branch is watching over his student athletes as he claims, how come we don’t know how much he makes per year on the backs of said athletes?
It’s a matter of public record what school teachers, principals, university presidents and professors make. How come nobody knows how much Branch is paid?
We know what Gary Bettman hauls in, but Branch’s pay is one of the more closely guarded secrets in hockey
And given Branch brought up Hockey Canada, what of their role in this?
Hockey Canada’s executive director Bob Nicholson was named in the Nova Scotia suit given he heads a government-funded group which uses these very same junior hockey players or student athletes and drags them all through Europe or North America for the world junior hockey championships.
Hockey Canada lines its pockets with millions in the process, all the while paying the players nothing.
How gross is it that our taxpayer dollars would go into an institution that won’t even pay minimum wage?
Those who have taken up this cause at this particular time are not the brightest lights on the Christmas tree, that much is fully granted.
But this is a train that is coming through and the sooner junior operators get their head around it, the better it’s going to be for themselves and their “student athletes.”