Canadian Football League Commissioner Randy Ambrosie delivered a strong message on Tuesday, the same day the league made its latest proposal – and what it insists will be its last – to the Players’ Association. of the CFL for a new collective agreement.
Ambrosie wanted the players to know that they have the final offer in the league. If the players reject it and force the league to cancel pre-season games this weekend, neither the offer nor the negotiation tactics will be friendlier from here.
“There’s no way to support that offer if we lose revenue from preseason games or, God forbid, regular season games,” Ambrosie said. “We want to reach that agreement and if we don’t, there is no way back to the quality of the agreement that we have on the table today.”
The league was in trouble Monday night when players voted against the deal that had been negotiated by its negotiating committee and recommended by its player representatives after an interim deal ended a strike. four days on May 18th.
Overnight it seemed, the CFLPA had gone from one of the most passive unions in the sport to its most militant.
The league responded in good faith, presenting a new proposal Tuesday morning that Ambrosie says it addresses the two key issues highlighted by the union after its members rejected the deal.
One is the lack of a ratification bonus, something the league had provided in the past. The other is the cumbersome and controversial Canadian proportion, which allowed teams to replace Canadians with Americans in many cases in each game.
The league addressed the issue of the ratification bonus by promising $ 1 million to be distributed among players. To balance this donation, the league is recovering a total of $ 450,000 from the 2022 salary cap ($ 50,000 per team) and lowering the guaranteed minimum limit in 2028 by $ 75,000 per team, to a total of $ 675,000.
The league sells that the actual reduction in the 2028 limit could be zero if the revenue-sharing formula works as they think it will, but forecasts of what the CFL economy will look like in 2028 are, at best, a good guess.
Basically, the deal borrows some money from the future and transfers it to the present, which matters to football because not many of today’s players will have to worry about the cover in 2028.
On the subject of the ratio, the league returned to a formula that was part of a proposal rejected by the players on March 14.
In this proposal, the league called for the proportion of seven starting Canadians to be changed to six true Canadians and one nationalized American, who was a veteran player who has played three years with the same team or five in the league.
By the time the interim agreement was reached four days later, the proportion had changed to seven initial Canadians, three of whom could be replaced by a nationalized American up to 49 per cent of their moments.
In addition to being cumbersome to process, the formula actually provided less guaranteed playing time for Canadians than the agreement the union had abandoned four days earlier. It was curious, because the union does not usually give up the Canadian proportion.
In its bid on Tuesday, the league has returned to its original six-and-a-half proposal. But the question remains: will players support an agreement that reduces the number of Canadian headlines from seven to six?
“We want to reward the contributions of our American players,” Ambrosie said. “This strikes a balance with the nationalized American for the flexibility of the squad and ensures that our great Canadian players come out on the field.”
There was another part of Ambrosie’s message that was a little more nefarious.
The commissioner wanted to be clear that the new offer of the league has reached the point where it is ready to arrive. In fact, without an agreement by midnight on Thursday, two things will happen immediately: the league will withdraw its offer from the table and cancel the four pre-season games scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
“We have to have a foot here,” Ambrosie said. “We have to hold both parties accountable.”
The cancellation of this weekend’s matches would in all likelihood mean a new strike or a lockout, and the teams will refuse to continue hosting and feeding the players as they have done since May 14th.
In short, chaos.
It is impossible to say to what extent this influences the decision of the players as to whether they support the current proposal. But it has to be a consideration.
So far, the players have been able to force their hand in the league without suffering any major inconvenience. But that ends Thursday at midnight.
Players will then have to choose between two very divergent paths, either putting the 2022 season back on track or navigating the unknown.