Category: WNBPA

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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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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WNBA’s CBA deadline looms, USL’s already passed, and the PHPA struck

The WNBPA and USLPA might want to take a cue from the PHPA and their recently successful — and brief — ECHL strike.

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There has been and continues to be a whole lot of discussion about the labor battles that might occur when the MLB collective bargaining agreement expires in December, and for good reason. Comparatively, though, that story is on the backburner, as the players and owners haven’t actually started to bargain for real, other than laying out some preliminary goals before the true negotiations take place.

Meanwhile, the Women’s National Basketball Association and the WNB Players Association have already blown through an extension on their current CBA and are days away from another deadline without any resolution. United Soccer League Championship, or USL Championship, has been at odds with its players for 494 days now — the union and league have been bargaining for their new CBA since August of 2024, and it expired with the coming of this new year. And that’s for a league where the players are hoping to make a livable wage, not “millions,” mirroring the fight of MLB’s minor-league players from earlier this decade, where they simply wanted to be paid as if their job was a job, and not have to worry about their next meal or their living conditions.

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Notes: White Sox signing, WNBPA strike authorization, NWSL cap issue

The White Sox made a signing that is both sensible and very White Sox, the WNBPA authorized a strike if necessary, and the NWSL is dealing with salary cap and star player concerns.

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The White Sox signed Nippon Professional Baseball’s Munetaka Murakami over the weekend, after he was posted by the Yakult Swallows last month. The deal is for two years and $34 million, which might not sound like all that much when you think of all the headlines about his prodigious power and his being just 25 years old, but there are genuine concerns with his ability to succeed in MLB, concerns which are obviously shared widely given he ended up signing with the White Sox for this specific contract.

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Notes: Pirates trying, WNBA bargaining

What if the Pirates actually are trying? The WNBA certainly isn’t.

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The Pirates tried to sign Kyle Schwarber, and I’m tempted to believe this was a genuine effort. That this needs to be said at all should explain quite a bit about how the Pirates have operated under current owner Bob Nutting: a four-year, $125 million contract offer from them has more than a whiff of “we tried” to it, after all, and nothing in their past suggests they would actually attempt to bring him aboard.

That is, unless, the conditions for their continued profiteering have changed. And sure enough, that’s what seems to be going on. Here’s what I wrote at Baseball Prospectus at the end of November, regarding rumors about the Pirates and Marlins being willing to spend, and their relation to Rob Manfred’s desire for an NFL-style pooling of local broadcast revenues that would lead to a revamped, competition-balancing revenue-sharing system:

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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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Thoughts on MLB’s 2025-2026 offseason

Some thoughts on what to look out for this offseason, as MLB and the MLBPA enter the final year of the current collective bargaining agreement.

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A little bit of end-of-season collecting of loose ends here, to start the offseason. We’re entering the final season of the current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the Players Association, so while there are always trends or happenings to watch out for, that’s even more the case in this scenario — what can be gleaned from the last full offseason before MLB decides to go lockout mode in 13 months?

First, there is going to be a lot of discussion about the Dodgers, and if they are ruining baseball because they spent a ton of money. There is actually some nuance to this discussion — I’ve already seen a whole lot of everything-is-a-nail style arguments about their spending both in terms of those who are against it and those who support it — that is being missed, but here’s where I stand.

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MLB’s investment in Athletes Unlimited intrigues

MLB has made a significant investment in professional softball, which could end up being great news for the sport.

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Obviously, it’s a rarity in this space when MLB’s business activities are brought up and not immediately ripped apart for some deserved transgression. So hey, let’s enjoy something happening where I’m leaning far more toward, “huh, neat” than “what’s their goal, here?” with eyes narrowed.

I’m speaking of, as the headline already alerted you to, Major League Baseball’s significant investment in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, or AUSL. Last summer, I wrote about the AUSL for Baseball Prospectus, in a piece titled “Athletes Unlimited and a New Model for Pro Sports.” Here’s a bit of that to get you up to speed on the league and my thoughts on it:

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Notes: Latest on the A’s, Reinsdorf’s Nashville gambit, WNBPA opts out of CBA

John Fisher is good for the money, he promises, also could someone please wildly overpay for a stake in the A’s, and soon? Also, Jerry Reinsdorf’s attempt to create leverage from the ether intensifies, and the WNBA players opt out.

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On Wednesday, Baseball Prospectus published a piece of mine updating their readers on what’s going on with the A’s and their quest to move to Las Vegas. I’ll give you the short version here: sources close to the A’s have been saying that there’s a plan “in place” for the private funds needed to cover the over $1 billion the A’s are on the hook for to build a stadium in Vegas, but no one is allowed to see the plan, there is no set date for revealing the plan despite a ticking clock, and oh, also the plan isn’t actually finished or in place, and is still mostly a hypothetical about things owner John Fisher could do if he wanted or needed to, I guess.

I bring this up here not just to point you in the direction of related writings elsewhere, but also because, later that same say, the New York Post published an “exclusive” story about the A’s and their quest to sell 25 percent of the team for $500 million, which some simple math tells us means they’re valuing the franchise at $2 billion. Two things: first, those same figures were reported nearly a year ago by the Los Angeles Times, and second, this doesn’t mean the Post is necessarily behind the times or the Times, so much as that it’s like Fisher simply isn’t moving off of this amount of money for this amount of ownership, and the calls for it are just getting louder given the aforementioned ticking clock.

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