The WNBA and the players union will meet Monday in New York for the first time in weeks to try to move the stalled collective bargaining negotiations forward.
Kelsey Plum, who is vice president of the players union, mentioned the meeting to reporters Friday while preparing for a game in Philadelphia with the Unrivaled three-on-three league.
“We’ll learn a lot from this meeting. I’m not trying to put it on the meeting, but this is a meeting that I think everyone understands what’s at stake,” Plum said. “The league has their timelines; we as players understand what’s at stake. I always come into anything that I do with a great attitude, and I’m going to see the best in this.”
Plum, the former Sparks guard who is an unrestricted free agent, will be joined by other members of the executive council, including Nneka Ogwumike and Napheesa Collier, as well as union leadership.
The league will have its regular negotiating team, including commissioner Cathy Engelbert, the labor relations committee and a few other owners, according to a person familiar with the situation. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations.
The person said the league had been asking for the meeting for weeks and it was agreed upon by the union Thursday.
Players said union leadership had been chatting with them frequently.
“Both sides want to get something done, we just got to make moves to get there,” Chicago guard Rachel Banham said. ”It’s got to be an actual negotiation with compromise.”
New York guard Natasha Cloud took a more hardened stance.
“It would be the worst business decision of any business to not literally pay the players that make your business go. Without us, there is no W season,” she said.
Talks to reach a new CBA haven’t had much traction over the last few weeks, as the union says it is waiting for a response to a proposal it sent around Christmas that included a 30% gross revenue share for the players. According to another person familiar with the negotiations, the league didn’t feel that proposal was much different than the previous one the union sent.
That person spoke on condition of anonymity also because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations.
The league’s most recent offer last month would guarantee a maximum base salary of $1 million that could reach $1.3 million through revenue sharing. That’s up from the current $249,000 and could grow to nearly $2 million over the life of the agreement, the person told the Associated Press.
The two sides have been in a “status quo” period after the latest extension of the CBA ran out Jan. 9. They agreed to a moratorium a few days later that halted the initial stages of free agency in which teams would seek to deliver qualifying offers and franchise tag designations to players.
If a new CBA isn’t agreed upon soon, it could delay the start of the season. It’s already delayed the expansion draft for Toronto and Portland. The league did release its schedule last week with the regular season set to begin May 8.
The last CBA was announced in the middle of January 2020, a month after it was agreed to. It easily could take two months from when a new CBA is reached to get to the start of free agency, which was supposed to begin Sunday.
Feinberg writes for the Associated Press.
