Category: Labor

It’s October; here’s where the CBA battle stands

Navigating the calm before the storm.

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The regular season is over, the focus is on MLB’s postseason, but there aren’t any playoff games on Friday — what better time than to take a breath and reflect on where things are going to go about a month from now?

Here’s the most basic view: there are quite a few people concerned that there won’t just be a lockout when the current collective bargaining agreement expires, but that it’s going to persist into the 2027 season, maybe even erasing all of it. Reasonable people can agree that there will most certainly be a lockout — there was a time early on in negotiations this year where that belief was tested, but MLB’s refusal to engage seriously with the problems the Players Association has with a salary cap, and the league’s refusal to propose anything that isn’t tied to the acceptance of a cap, did away with any pretense otherwise.

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MLB not interested in realistic proposals, yet

An update on what MLB has been up to, and why some bad things are good, actually. But really.

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Since last time out, there have been more announcements of the proposals MLB is making to the Players Association, as the two attempt to collectively bargain a new agreement that will take hold in 2027. Some of those, I’ve already covered for Baseball Prospectus — this one is free to read with a basic subscription, i.e. the cost of an email address — and some have come since then, as well, and will get addressed there next week. Hey, it’s a holiday weekend and they’re going dark on Friday, I ran out of days alright?

There’s no reason to avoid giving a little preview there, though, but let’s start with what’s already written:

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The MLBPA (surprise) announced their opening proposals

Some thoughts on the MLBPA’s opening proposals and MLB’s expected response.

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On Wednesday, the MLB Players Association sent out a press release detailing the opening proposals they sent to the the league. It was a delightful little surprise, considering the PA tends to be quiet about this sort of thing, but — and this is just my opinion here, as someone who has been on this beat for multiple collective bargaining agreements — the idea is likely to keep pace with the league, which will absolutely release info every time proposals are exchanged and leading up to the next batch, as well. That’s how a narrative is controlled, and with the union not having the kind of explicit and obvious support from both media and fans that it enjoyed in 2021-2022, both in the lead-in and during the lockout itself, it’s understandable that the PA would use the 2026 negotiations to attempt to keep the story in check.

I covered the proposals — what we know of them at this time, anyway, the PA gave a broad view with few figures in it in its statement — over at Baseball Prospectus, which you’ll need a subscription to read. However, I can give you the broad strokes of the broad strokes: the PA is doing essentially what I suggested it should do back in April, with expansions to the league minimum salary, arbitration eligibility, and the bonus pool for pre-arb players, but on top of that is also trying to get ahead of MLB’s desire for a salary cap with a plan to reshape revenue-sharing, as well as reward low-revenue teams for spending and punish those who avoid it.

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UNITE HERE is keeping busy

Collective bargaining, ICE threats, the World Cup, and strike threats. Local UNITE HERE unions have their hands full in 2026.

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Concessions workers at Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins, have been rallying for improved pay and working conditions for some time now. At the Twins’ home opener this year, back on April 3, members of union UNITE HERE Local 17 gathered outside Target Field to speak to fans about the low pay they received, which, per UNITE’s own wording, “it takes more than an hour of work just to afford a hamburger at the stadium.”

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New WNBA CBA secures union’s most necessary win

The WNBPA has plenty to fight for in the future, but it also has the ability to fight for what it deserves thanks to a key W in this year’s CBA.

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There is plenty to love about the new collective bargaining agreement between the WNBA and the WNB Players Association. For one, that there’s a new CBA with wins in it at all is a victory, given that the league’s approach to bargaining was to waste time and then emphasize how little of it was left before an imagined deadline. The union — save a little public setback that was swiftly taken care of and recanted — did an excellent job of sticking together and ignoring the league’s many empty threats about what it could afford and not afford, about how much time was left to come to an agreement why won’t you just agree to what we’ve offered already.

You can read the full list of “key” agreements in the CBA here, but there is also this from the presser the WNBA released, to catch you up in a hurry:

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What are Kelsey Plum and Breanna Stewart doing?

The pair of WNBPA vice presidents are making internal discussions external ones, and the only thing that will come from it is harming the union’s bargaining power.

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You do not have to agree with every other member of your union on every little thing, and far be it from me to suggest such a thing. However, you are all on the same side, facing off against management, a fact that is true all the time but is at its truest at the bargaining table. Solidarity is vital here, especially as far as a public face goes: the bosses are always looking for cracks, for division, for fears to exploit. You cannot give them any of that; division is ammunition, and it will be aimed at you in short order.

And yet, WNBA stars Kelsey Plum and Breanna Stewart are both publicly speaking on union matters that should be internal only. The two, who are also vice presidents of the union’s executive player committee and therefore are in a position where it seems as if they are speaking for membership as a whole whenever they step in front of a microphone, spent the early part of the week discussing how the revenue-sharing progress made in bargaining to this point already feels like a win and that a strike simply isn’t worth it. That is a discussion to be had, sure, but it sure as shit ain’t one you have in front of a microphone with press around. That’s internal business.

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Rumored MLB salary floor figures are unserious

The good news is that all this talk of a salary cap makes it seem even less likely that a real fight over one is brewing.

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There has been more and more discussion of MLB’s owners pushing for a salary cap of late, which makes sense: as the regular season approaches, we also move closer to bargaining season. Despite all of this, I’m still not fully convinced that the owners actually plan to give up part or all of the 2027 campaign in order to implement a salary cap, and it’s actually because of the increased chatter.

I don’t mean that contradictorily for the sake of it, don’t worry. What I’m getting at is that the nature of the conversation is convincing me that this is more feeling out, more keeping a discussion topic alive rather than letting it die, than a true and honest attempt at implementing a salary cap. Or, as Joe Sheehan more accurately refers to it, a payroll band: a cap comes with a floor, which means a team’s payroll lives within a specific band. And the band that MLB is rumored to be proposing at some point, per Jon Heyman, is laughable.

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Notes: WNBA proposal, angry MLB owners, weird MLBPA licensing

The WNBA finally made a counterproposal, MLB owners are mad about Kyle Tucker, and the MLBPA made a curious licensing deal.

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It took over six weeks, but the WNBA finally countered the last proposal sent in by the Women’s National Basketball Player’s Association. In case you haven’t been following along closely, the holdup was that the league didn’t feel that the last PA proposal was different enough to merit a counter, and was basically waiting for the union to blink and send in a different one that had more concessions in it. Which is cute since it’s not like the WNBA has exactly been willing to concede much, to the point that, in December, the players gave the bargaining team strike authorization with 93 percent of the members voting, and 98 percent of those voting to authorize one if the seven-player executive committee deemed it necessary.

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The WNBA refuses to admit that the grift is over

In two days, the deadline for the WNBA and the WNBPA to come to terms on a new CBA will be here, and no agreement seems to be in sight.

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It’s November 28. The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement expired at the end of October, but the deadline for it to actually end was pushed to November 30, a month later, to give the league and the players time to continue to bargain before the seemingly inevitable happens. We’re two days out from that date now, and things aren’t looking great as far as resolutions go.

The WNBA recently made a proposal that generated headlines, with a new maximum salary for players of $1.1 million. That might not sound like much, but remember that players in the W aren’t pulling in what their NBA counterparts are — a $1.1 million maximum salary is a massive jump from the current max of just under $250,000. The problem, as multiple outlets have brought up in the week-plus since this offer, is that the salary the WNBA is offering in this proposal isn’t actually for $1.1 million.

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Notes: Pirates frustration, Mets collapse

The Pirates are a joke even to their players, the Mets collapse isn’t as much of a joke as it seems, and what I’ve been working on around the internet of late.

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Pirates players are as frustrated as their fans

If you’ve ever wondered whether players on a team like the Pirates are as tired of losing as their fans are, well, look no further than a report that published this week. (Though, don’t actually look, as it’s from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the News Guild members of which remain on strike.)

To be fair, you don’t actually need to read the story to get a sense of it, if you know anything about an organization that has lied to the public about their finances and spending capabilities, and straight-up misled its own front office about the available budget. Basically, players are frustrated enough that they spoke, on the record, about their lack of belief in the organization to do what needs to be done. Meaning, to acquire players that can help them be better than they are, which is not a very good team — one wasting the absurd potential of Paul Skenes.

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