The Major League Soccer Players Association and MLS announced on Friday that they have reached a preliminary agreement on a revised collective bargaining agreement.
The CBA was approved by a 24-11 vote by the union’s executive council and bargaining committee, according to a source. The deal will now be sent to the full players union membership for a vote, which can be held as soon as Saturday. A simple majority is all that is needed to ratify the agreement.
– MLS schedule: Season starts April 3; MLS Cup Final on December 3rd
– Carlisle: Where MLS stands on labor negotiations
The deal must then be approved by the league’s board of directors. This is expected to take place and will pave the way for the opening of training camps on 22 February and the start of the MLS season on 3 April. It also avoids the termination of the CBA and the exclusion of the players, who are threatened by MLS if an agreement cannot be reached.
MLS announced that the proposal on the table would extend the CBA by 2027 by two years, a clause the league has been fighting for since the start of negotiations and something that was a fixed point in the talks.
The expansion has slowed down the jump in compensation that usually accompanies a new CBA. More importantly, such an extension gives the league a significant distance from the 2026 World Cup – hosted jointly by the US, Canada and Mexico – and takes away the leverage from the MLSPA to negotiate better terms in the run-up to the tournament and the years that follow.
Sources told ESPN that among the player benefits in the proposal is no reduction in salaries in 2021, along with improved leisure time in 2026 and 2027, in which players of 24 years and with four years of service would qualify. The old deal required five years of service.
The players would also receive a general salary increase of 10% in 2027 and improved salaries for players classified as senior minimum. Under the revenue sharing agreement for the next media rights contract, players will receive a percentage of the difference between the new transaction (plus $ 100 million). In 2023 and 2024 the percentage will be 12.5% (a decrease in 2024 by 12.5 percentage points) and from 2025 to 2027 the percentage will be 25%.
Negotiations on the revised CBA have reopened after MLS invoked an overpowering clause on December 29 due to the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the COVID-19 vaccine being longer than expected, MLS expects to look at another year with few or no fans in the stands. Given its reliance on the revenue from the game day, MLS says its finances will be heavily impacted and that players will have to bear the sacrifices.
The union opposed MLS’s approach not out of financial necessity but rather out of financial opportunism. The MLSPA allocated $ 150 million in concessions during the term of the agreement when it signed the previous CBA last June.
The appeal of the force majeure clause opened a 30-day window for the two parties to negotiate a revised CBA. Because an agreement was not reached within that window, either side could have terminated the CBA. But MLS was the only party that threatened such a maneuver, saying that if an agreement was not reached, it would not only end the CBA, but also close the players.
The threat of a strike has given the league increased leverage, and MLS has used it successfully, withdrawing the key concessions it envisioned at the start of talks.
This is the third time in the past year that the two parties have negotiated a CBA. The two parties agreed in principle last February, but neither party formally ratified the agreement. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, MLS renegotiated, and the two parties agreed on a revised agreement last June. In this agreement, the league succeeds in inserting the above-mentioned superiority clause.
Sources told ESPN that the force majeure clause would not take effect on December 1, 2021, but that it could be invoked after the time.