United ask players and staff to take wage cut
DUNDEE UNITED have asked their players and coaching staff to take a 20- per- cent pay cut until the end of the season as the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic hits home at Tannadice.
It is understood that no agreement has yet been reached, but with no date set for supporters to return to stadiums in the near future, the club are hoping to mitigate that huge revenue loss by slashing wages until the end of the current campaign.
Manager Micky Mellon and his players held talks with the club yesterday and are now considering their proposal.
Speaking to a local newspaper, United owner Mark Ogren spelled out the bleak situation facing his own and other clubs in Scottish football.
“The first phase we had budgeted for so we anticipated it but we didn’t budget for this second phase [ of the pandemic],” said Ogren. “We expected some fans back. As a result, we’re doing a total review of the club’s finances and we’re going to be implementing some cost- cutting measures for the short term and the medium term to counteract what is happening.
“We have to plan now for the worst- case scenario of no fans this season. We’d like to think there will be fans in the ground before then but we can’t plan for it. We’re assessing everything from top to bottom.”
Ogren hopes that by implementing some painful measures now, he can avoid the prospect of job losses down the line.
“I’d like to think that redundancies are off the table,” he said. “We want to do everything we can to protect people and their jobs. But we just don’t know how bad this is going to be. This will impact everybody, no matter who you are.”