NEW YORK - For the NBA players Union filed a complaint of unfair labour practices of working with the National Labor Relations Board Tuesday, seeking an injunction to prevent the owners to impose a lockout when the current collective bargaining agreement expires June 30.
The players Union, less than a month after receiving the last formal proposal of the owners, is accusing the owners of bargaining in bad faith.
The complaint, in part, alleging the NBA is "requests" takeaway "making hard, inflexible and coarsely regressive NBA knows are not acceptable to the Union."
In addition, the complaint alleges the NBA engaged in "classic" take it or leave it "and bargaining" with the intent to run out the clock on the ABC, "until the NBA locks employees represented to force them to accept hard and regressive NBA requests."
The NBA issued a statement in response to the complaint.
"There is no merit to the charge filed today by the Association of players with the National Labor Relations Board, as met it - and will continue to comply - all our obligations under the federal laws of the work.". It will not make us efforts to negotiate in good faith a new collective agreement with the Association of players, "the League said in a news release.
Sources told ESPN.com that the players were so enraged by most recent proposal for owners seeking a rollback nearly 40% in existing contracts over three years and a hard salary cap, the union could explore a variety of legal options before presenting a formal another counterproposal.
The sides are supposed to have a formal negotiating session with the Working Committee of the owners and the Executive Board of the players at the NBA Finals in Dallas or Oklahoma City.
Tuesday with the NLRB filing marked a sharp turn in negotiation strategy after the sides had held several sessions of informal discussions in recent weeks.
The filing comes all just eight days after the death of 2 of the union executive, Gary Hall and moves the dispute in a different forum through which players attempt to gain bargaining leverage.
In a statement, the union said that unfair practices included failure to bargain in good faith, requiring huge financial points of previous contracts without offering in exchange for concessions, bypassing the Union to deal directly with the players and threatening unlawful lockout.
"We urged the Commission to investigate the case quickly and to seek an injunction against illegal trading practices of the NBA and its threat of illegal lockout," said the union.
A week earlier, NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver struck a conciliatory tone in discussing negotiations, even up to say it would be "irrational" for the sides to allow the dispute to evolve in a work stoppage.
The NBA had no conflict of prolonged work since the summer, 1998 when a lockout extended in February 1999 and forced the League to play a 50 - game season.
But the owners took a radical position, in the ongoing negotiations, saying that they need a system completely restructured to give them a greater share of the financial pie. Commissioner David Stern said the League expects to lose $ 300 million in the current season.
No comments:
Post a Comment