Members of the Professional Hockey Players Association voted to authorize the bargaining committee to go on strike if it fails to reach an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement with the ECHL, union executive director Brian Ramsay said Monday.
The ECHL, in an update posted on its website, said the union had informed players the move could happen as early as Thursday after the holiday break. Ramsay said the schedule would be communicated to participants later in the day.
“Our members have made it clear that they have had enough,” Ramsay said during a video call with reporters. “Unfortunately, this league would rather bully us than bargain.”
The parties have been negotiating the Central Bank since January. Ramsay accused the league of unfair negotiations, including a recent approach to players directly with proposals that were reported to the National Labor Relations Board.
“It took almost a year for this league to recognize that we should have the right to choose helmets that fit and are safe for us,” Ramsay said. “This is a league that still supplies our members with used equipment. This is a league that doesn't care about player travel and basically states that a nine-hour bus ride home should count as your day off. This year we have had members spend over 28 hours on the bus to play back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday nights, only to be paid less than the referees who work the same games.”
The ECHL said its latest proposal calls for raising the salary cap by 16.4 percent this season, with a retroactive payment upon ratification, as well as increasing total player salaries in future years to pay players nearly 27 percent more than the current cap. The league said it also proposed increased daily allowances, mandatory days off and a 325-mile limit on travel between back-to-back games.
“Our approach will continue to balance the need to best support our players and maintain a sustainable business model that helps ensure the long-term success of our league so that it remains affordable and accessible to fans,” the ECHL said, adding that the average ticket price is $21. “Negotiations are progressing, but not as quickly as we would like. We have reached a number of preliminary agreements and remain focused on reaching a new comprehensive agreement that will support our players and the long-term health of every team in our league.”
Disagreeing with the ECHL's offer numbers, Ramsay said inflation would mean players would earn less than the equivalent amount in 2018, before the pandemic. The league said the shutdown will result in some games being postponed, players not getting paid and losing housing and health care benefits it pays for.
Ramsay called the players' threats to lose housing if they went on strike an unfair labor practice.
“Consistently over the last six or eight weeks, teams have been trying to intimidate and intimidate our members, threatening our members with their jobs, housing, work visas if they're from another country, different tactics like that,” Ramsay said.
Jimmy Mazza, who played several seasons in the ECHL and is now on the negotiating committee, argued that owners don't know what it's like to travel 29 hours on a bus or receive a used helmet.
“Top level, you know these players don’t get treated like that, so why do they treat us like that?” – said Mazza. “It's kind of a slap in the face for us with the way these negotiations have been going for a year, when just five days ago we got a little movement on the helmet issue when it should have been done a year ago.”
The ECHL, formerly known as the East Coast Hockey League and now simply referred to by its acronym, is a North American development league that sits two tiers below the NHL, with the American Hockey League in between. There are 30 teams in total, 29 of which are located in the United States and one in Canada in Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
The AHL and PHPA are operating under the terms of their most recent CBA agreement, which expired on August 31st. An AHL representative said that the parties are very close to a new agreement.
The NHL and NHL Players Association earlier this year ratified an agreement that guarantees labor peace until 2030.
