Tag: WNBA CBA

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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