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EspañolIn December, the WNBA's players voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike during the union's collective bargaining agreement negotiations with the league.
According to Front Office Sports' Annie Costabile, some of those players have now changed their minds. A WNBPA virtual meeting reportedly got tense on Tuesday as its members discussed the best path forward in negotiations, with one cause for disagreement being the approach to a potential strike.
However, more than half of the union's leadership reportedly reaffirmed their commitment to striking if the league forces their hand.
The WNBPA head painted the discussions as positive for the union, via FOS:
A letter sent from WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson to union members and obtained by Front Office Sports verified the tone of Tuesday’s meeting. In it, she wrote, “last night’s conversation was spirited, passionate, and at times tough.”
Jackson went on to say this signaled the health of their union.
“Honest debate is not division,” Jackson wrote. “It is engagement.”
Healthy or not, the discussions come amid a tense time for both the league and union.
Earlier this week, the WNBA floated a March 10 deadline to reach an agreement for the framework of a new CBA. Per FOS, a March 10 agreement would not be officially signed until March 31, with the ensuing timeline including an expansion draft between April 1 and 6, qualifying offers sent out on April 7 and 8, a free agent signing period from April 12 to 18, the WNBA draft on April 13 and training camps starting on April 19.
The exchange of proposals has been at a snail's pace, though. While the league has insisted the matter is urgent, it also waited six weeks to respond to the union's proposal from December. The latest proposal, put forward by the league last weekend, saw it stick with a $5.65 million salary cap while offering to continue providing guaranteed housing for all players for 2026 only.
The union's most recent proposal saw it make some concessions on revenue sharing, the most contentious issue of this CBA fight, with a salary cap below $9.5 million. The league slammed that proposal as "unrealistic."
There are several factors at play here, as both sides are composed of smaller factions with their own motivations. In the case of the WNBPA, you have stars and players just trying to break into the league, as one player explained to FOS:
“Everyone has different experiences in the league and in their life,” veteran guard Lexie Brown told FOS. “So I did not expect all of us to come into these meetings, week by week and just kumbaya and everybody agree on everything. That’s not reality.”
“We all want to play... We all want a fair CBA, but fair looks different to different people. So how do we get to a place where fair looks good to everybody: to the majority, to the minority, to the max players, to the role players, the rookies. How do we get to a place where fair looks the same?”
Despite some new reservations, the WNBPA's leadership still has the ability to call a strike. With less than two weeks until that March 10 deadline, both it and the league both have plenty of work to do.