Labor Strife
MLS Players Remain United As CBA Negotiations Stall
Major League Soccer and the MLS Players Union remain far apart on several key issues in their ongoing labor negotiations—so far apart, in fact, that the season's start could be in jeopardy.
BY
Brooke Tunstall
Posted
January 22, 2015
5:22 PM
FORTY-THREE DAYS.
That’s how long it is until the start of Major League Soccer’s 20th season, with the Los Angeles Galaxy scheduled to host the Chicago Fire on March 6.
But if the league and its players don’t reach an accord on a new collective bargaining agreement, the start of the season is in jeopardy. The current CBA expires at the end of this month and without a new one in place, it is doubtful the season begins as planned.
“I can’t imagine a situation where we would start the season without a CBA,” MLS players association head Bob Foose told American Soccer Now this morning.
Until the current CBA expires next week, there will be no work-stoppage as there can be neither a lockout nor a strike under its terms. However MLS deputy commissioner Mark Abbott said it’s too early to worry the season won’t start on time.
“It is premature at this stage of the discussions to speculate about the possibility of a work stoppage,” Abbott said in a statement released by MLS. “Although there are a number of issues which still need to be resolved, that is true of every CBA negotiation, and we are committed to continued negotiations."
Neither side is offering up much in the way of details so tea leaves are hard to read. But if the latest negotiations are a sign, things aren’t going well. Garber and several other league officials met with Foose this week at the office of the union’s general counsel in Washington, D.C. Two days of sessions were scheduled but the group dispersed after only one because of a lack of progress.
“We remain very far apart on several key issues,” Foose said. “And while I remain confident, it’s difficult to see a path to resolution right now.”
Foose said no new date has been set for the next round of negotiations. Foose also said that no third-party mediators had been discussed as of yet, something that helped bring a resolution to the last CBA negotiations in 2010.
The two biggest issues, as they have been in previous CBA talks, remain compensation and free agency.
"Free agency is certainly an enormously important issue,” Foose said. “But player compensation is also extremely important and the mass of inequality in pay. It’s as much how the money is spent as it is how much is spent.”
Last year’s salary cap was $3.1 million. But the league’s designated players—players for whom most of their salary is exempt from the cap—often exceed that all by themselves. For instance, per the MLS Players Union union, the Seattle Sounders' Clint Dempsey earned $6.69 million last year and Michael Bradley of Toronto FC pulled down $6.5 million.
Meanwhile, Dempsey’s teammate Andy Rose, a part-time starter in his third year as a pro on one of the top teams in the league, made $48,825—the same salary earned by Toronto’s Mark Bloom, who started 26 games at right back last year. (Bloom has signed a new deal this offseason and will presumably be better compensated going forward.)
Dempsey makes $128,653 per week. Rose earns $938 every seven days.
That gap is something the players are seeking to close.
January 22, 2015
5:22 PM

