CFLPA asks players to delay flights in case new deal with league can’t be reached

The CFL Players’ Association and CFL are still working towards a new collective bargaining agreement in time for training camp, but the players’ union is telling its players to prepare for the worst.

“We advised our membership (Friday) morning to change their team-directed flights to the latest second possible,” CFL executive director Brian Ramsay told media on Friday.

“Our goal is to try and get a deal, but we’ve been clear from the start that we’re not going to enter into training camp without that fair deal. The league has told us that they would not fly our members back (home) if there was a work stoppage.”

While the union’s current priority is letting its members know what the latest status of negotiations are, Ramsay said it doesn’t feel it’s in a jam quite yet when it comes to talks.

“Our goal is to get a fair agreement and we are missing some significant and critical issues being addressed in that agreement. We just don’t have that right now,” Ramsay said. “The problem is the CFL is pushing us against a wall.”

Training camps are set to begin on May 15, but that start date remains up in the air as the two sides work towards a new CBA with the current one expiring May 14.

Ramsay said the union has been ready to meet with the CFL over the CBA for a while.

“The hard part is now we’re down to the last seven or eight days and it wouldn’t take us long to get together and try to work through something but our offer to meet earlier than Wednesday was declined by the league,” Ramsay said.

A leaked CFLPA memo Thursday night indicated some of the issues in the bargaining agreement are a 10-year contract with no increase in the cap, discussions around guaranteed contracts, and an elimination of the Canadian-American ratio.

“There are some key issues that we have right now that are still critical for us,” Ramsay said. “We’ve talked for a number of years about them, we’ve talked about creating a revenue-sharing model in our league, we’ve talked about the uncertainty that one-year contracts have brought across our league and different ways to fix that and we’ve talked about protection for our membership with on-field injuries.”

“Based off what the current proposal is, it’s just not good enough for our members. That’s the part where we have to bridge the gap,” CFLPA president Solomon Elimimian said.

““Make the players a household name. You want roster continuity and that’s the thing that’s going to help our league grow. Make our players the stars. The only way you can do that is through guaranteed contracts, long-term deals. Let’s promote our athletes.”

The CFL has said it remains committed to a partnership with the players and that will continue when an agreement has been reached.

The league also said Canadians and American players who come to the league are the lifeblood of it.

pic.twitter.com/xKyIYkTTII

— CFL (@CFL) May 6, 2022

Ramsay said he doesn’t know why it always seems negotiations for CBAs always seem to go to the final days.

“One of the things that’s important for us in this is changing the date moving forward,” he said. “If we’re going to move forward as partners, then why do we always put ourselves in this position?

“It’s hard for us not to think it’s simply tactics by the CFL to try and bring our guys up for a day and then strand them when they are coming from all over the world and North America. We know the teams have committed to training camps and invested the time and money and things like that. This isn’t good for anybody.”

“We need more time,” Elimimian added. “That’s what’s needed here. We have made progress, we’re not where we should be and quite frankly, we just need more time to get back to the table and hash out some issues.”

The CFLPA has also been given a strike mandate if a deal cannot be reached.

980 CJME reached out to the league for a response but one wasn’t given by time of publication.