Nasty fight on the horizon as CFL labour talks begin
Players’ union will take a tough stance on guaranteed contracts, revenue sharing
Get ready for a fight
This could get nasty, maybe a little silly, and likely very tiresome.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it disrupts CFL training camps, too, maybe even the start of the regular season.
Beginning Monday, the CFL and its players square off at the bargaining table, and despite all the warm and fuzzy talk of partnership from commissioner Randy Ambrosie, there’s every reason to believe this will be a slugfest.
This is a tougher, bulked-up version of the CFL Players Association, not the one we’re used to seeing roll over in negotiations in the past.
And it wants blood. Rather, it wants compensation for the blood spilled by players.
Health and rehabilitation benefits are at the top of the players’ list of demands. We already knew that.
This week the union fired another warning shot that, if it connects, would dramatically alter the landscape of pro football.
“Guaranteed contracts should be and will be discussed at the bargaining table,” CFLPA senior adviser Ken Georgetti said during a media conference call.
If that’s not a bold position to take, nothing is.
Unlike the other major sports, guaranteed contracts have never been part of football. Whether a player has lost a step or not, if the coach sours on him or management doesn’t like the way he dresses, they can cut him on the spot and get out of his contract.
The only dollars guaranteed are the ones already paid out in signing bonuses or off-season bonuses.
Once training camp comes around, even before camp, that binding agreement the two sides signed isn’t binding at all.
Some protection kicks in well into the season, but even a longtime veteran can be punted before the nine-game mark without a payout. Injured players can be cut the day they’re deemed recovered from their injuries.
The rules are remarkably in favour of management.
The players’ association sees another problem here: players who become a little too prounion for management’s liking don’t have any protection.
Georgetti, newly on board with the PA but with a long history of labour negotiations in the real world, can’t believe that in this line of work, an employee who might want to advocate for himself and his teammates is “vulnerable to those kinds of whims of the management.”
“That landscape’s going to change,” Georgetti said. “But the relationship between the players and the league has to change. The players need to have more say in the outcome of their work, and they haven’t had very much to date, I must say.”
At the bargaining table, owners and management types will eventually say guaranteeing contracts is a non-starter, and the CBA talks will hit a wall of tacklers behind the line of scrimmage.
There will be other plays that go nowhere.
Covering the long-term effects of player injuries is a blank cheque the owners won’t want to sign, no matter how much sense it makes. This subject veers into the dreaded brain-injury territory, too, and long-term conditions like CTE.
Then there’s the issue the union tries to downplay, but is, in fact, the one that speaks most loudly to many players: money.
The players will want a defined share of league revenue, just like players get in the other major pro sports.
Whether it’s a 50-50 split or something less, that’s the only way to “share the rewards,” one of the catchphrases favoured by Georgetti and executive director Brian Ramsay.
No doubt players read about the millions of dollars in profits pocketed by the Grey Cup host team every year and wonder why they can’t get in on that action. They are, after all, the stars of the show.
The union wanted a defined share of revenue in the last CBA, five years ago, but didn’t get it.
This time they’re ready for the fight.
Two years ago they hired a CEO in Ramsay to quarterback the union. And they’ve brought Georgetti aboard to tackle the massive issues at the table.
His job is to get the players the best deal they’ve ever had.
And the players are more united than they’ve ever been. One of the reasons football has lagged behind other sports when it comes to protection for its players, financial and otherwise, is a lack of union strength. That has changed. pfriesen@postmedia.com Twitter: @friesensunmedia