The dam burst on Tuesday after nearly 17 months of collective bargaining talks, which have oscillated between periods of intense activity and silence. It exposed an issue that has been debated for months within the WNBA Players Association.
Not everyone agrees. Not everyone is considered or even involved. Not everyone knows what happened. All of this is due to the efforts of the league and the league, which set March 10 as the deadline for the WNBPA to start the CBA season on time.
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The situation was becoming more chaotic by the minute.
ESPN reported Tuesday night that the union’s first vice president, Kelsey Plum, and vice president Breanna Stewart wrote a personal letter to the union’s executive director, Terri Jackson, expressing concerns about the union’s handling of negotiations “including a lack of adequate player involvement in the process.”
They said that despite the union opting out of the previous CBA more than 16 months ago, they “learned the details of these negotiations in less than two months after first seeing the proposals in January,” ESPN reported. They said their requests for specific information from the union have not yet been met. It makes sense that a flurry of proposals have emerged over the past few weeks after the two sides reached an impasse after failing to extend a third deadline.
That’s unacceptable for two members of the executive committee, who are supposed to be the conduits of information between Jackson, union president Nneka Ogwumike and each team’s player representatives. This contrasts with the party’s public line that communication within the union has been strong, even as concerns and a lack of information flowed privately. No excuses. Jackson and Ogwumike had been in their roles since 2016 and were working on the 2020 CBA that was considered progressive at the time.
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These claims are strong. Nor are they surprising, since Plumb and Stewart are at the center of it. They are essentially the people on the executive committee who are most willing to speak out on collective bargaining agreement issues and provide in-depth, nuanced responses. Plumb revealed news of an in-person meeting in New York in January that broke a weeks-long deadlock between the proposals. This is no accident.
She understood what the group of reporters waiting for her were prepared to ask, and she had a responsibility to speak out about it, not only taking it upon herself to tell it, but doing so with optimism. Ahead of Monday’s unmatched semifinal game in Brooklyn, both Plum and Stewart decried potential strikes and highlighted positive improvements for players in recent proposals.
“I’ve always been a gainer, not a disparity guy,” Plum told reporters. “Honestly, I think if you look at where we’ve come from, shoot, since I’ve been in the league to now, now that we’re getting a revenue share, it’s a huge win.”
Meanwhile, other members of the executive committee have spent the past few weeks trying to avoid questions about the collective bargaining agreement proposal or making themselves scarce. It is often claimed that there is a need for consistency in messaging.
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No wonder if some people are left in the dark and need time to adjust. Those who unintentionally or intentionally go against the leader’s wishes will be criticized. Why speak internally or otherwise?
“When we and other players attempted to express concerns about the negotiations, we felt we were acting against the interests of the Palestinian Authority,” the letter read, according to ESPN. “Many other players around the league felt the same frustrations and expressed these grievances to us, but they felt intimidated or unable to speak out.”
Players must live with this CBA and its consequences. Plumb and Stewart argued they should not be “essentially…excluded” from the negotiations. There is no reason to suppress their opinions when they are the very people the union is trying to help. It all feels like heavy-handedness coming from the top, when the reality is that negotiations are by definition discussions aimed at reaching an agreement. Change is gradual; it cannot happen all at once.
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Plumb often said this publicly. As time goes by, there is no alternative but to affected seasons. Even if some players have saved money over the past two years to prepare for a possible strike, as the union has suggested, it will not be easy to get through financially. The league has provided most of what the players have asked for, including developing players, tacit housing, changes to the salary cap and accelerating rookie contracts. The union has been less clear-cut, talking only about revenue sharing and its incremental changes over the past few weeks.
There are also legitimate concerns about the league’s long-term financial health. If any of the proposals put forward today are codified, participants will receive a share of the revenue. To share revenue, you need revenue. In order to bring in revenue, there needs to be games.
That’s all Stewart and Plum said this week in Brooklyn. Behind the scenes, they talked a lot. Their direct appeal to union leadership to deal with the failed players was a turning point in these negotiations. Whether that’s good or bad.
