October 22, 2024
Locked On Women’s Basketball: Terri Jackson, WNBPA opt out of CBA, seek ‘transformational’ new pact
By The Next
WNBPA executive director talks new CBA negotiations, decision to opt out, and more
On today’s episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) executive director Terri Jackson joins host Howard Megdal to talk about the players association’s recent decision to opt out of their current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the WNBA. The current CBA, which went into effect in 2020, will now expire on Oct. 31, 2025, meaning the WNBPA and the league will have just over one year to negotiate a new agreement.
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First, Jackson explained some of the WNBPA’s decision making process, and the many aspects of the CBA the association considered, including how the WNBA’s finances, relevancy and attention evolved from 2020 to the present.
“It’s a review of the league and the team’s business, understanding where the where the dollars are going, where they’re not going, how they’re flowing,” Jackson said. “It is good to see ownership groups that have come in and reinvigorated the [WNBA] and have looked at this as a business and said, ‘we need to spend more. We need to invest more.’ And when they do that, I think [New York Liberty co-owner Clara Wu Tsai], said it best, ‘when they do that, things pay off,’ you know. And so if you have ownership groups who’ve come in with that business frame of mind, and they’ve said, we’ve got to do things bigger and better. We’ve got to professionalize this league, we’ve got to spend more, we’ve got to bring in more resources, which requires us to spend more, then that’s what you see happening.”
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They also talked about the previous negotiations, particularly what wasn’t possible at the time that has now become a real option for the WNBPA to bring to the negotiation table. Jackson specifically spoke about the league’s fixed (“hard”) salary cap, which currently limits the amount teams are allowed to spend on player salaries to $1,463,200, with little, if any, flexibility.
“There was so much to to fix in that old CBA and fixing this old model of business for the W, so we couldn’t do everything,” Jackson explained. “But now these are the kinds of things that are back on the table, and we have to think about our cap system is too hard. It’s a hard cap, and it is crazy hard. There are no exceptions and and just to help folks understand what I’m talking about, a real easy example would be what we do for pregnant players. So previously, under the old CBA, if you were out on leave, you got half of your salary, right, 50%. Now under this current CBA, the 2020 CBA, you get all of your salary. Very proud of that, but there tends to be a negative impact that flows from that.”
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“Because we’re in this hard cap system that salary counts against the cap. So, what should be a benefit and a good thing is now trending as though it’s creating a little bit of a negative thing and a negative environment. And so we want to eliminate that. We have to figure out ways to make this cap, if we’re going to be in a cap system, big. If we’re going to be there, it’s got to be more flexible. It’s just too rigid. And it makes it hard for the players, and it makes it, I believe, hard for the coaches and the GMs to do their job,” she continued.
Tune in to hear more from Jackson about the goals the WNBPA has for this new round of CBA negotiations. Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about the WNBA, women’s college basketball, basketball history and much more!
