The WNBA and members of the WNBA Players Association will meet in New York on Monday to discuss the stalled collective bargaining negotiations, Kelsey Plum said on Friday after Unrivaled shootaround.
PHILADELPHIA — The WNBA and members of the WNBA Players Association will meet in New York on Monday to discuss the stalled collective bargaining negotiations, Kelsey Plum said on Friday after Unrivaled shootaround.
The meeting will include members of the players union, the league’s CBA leadership, the legal team, members of the Labor Relations Committee and potentially other owners, a league source with knowledge of the discussions told Yahoo Sports, confirming the meeting.
Plum said she and Naphessa Collier will attend since they can fly out after their early Unrivaled games on Sunday in Miami. Plum and Collier, who co-founded the offseason 3x3 league with Breanna Stewart, are both WNBPA vice presidents.
It is believed to be the first in-person meeting since shortly after the WNBA Finals concluded in October and the initial CBA deadline passed on Oct. 31. The league had reached out to the union for a couple of weeks now to put a meeting on the books, a source with knowledge of the talks told Yahoo Sports. Those requests were either ignored or declined until Thursday, the source said. Plum said to her knowledge, the meeting came together in recent days.
“At the end of the day we’re human beings,” Plum said. “I think conversation face-to-face goes a long way, right? And you can understand body language, you can understand tone, you can understand all those type of things. And intent. And I just believe that eye contact is actually a massive thing that we forget.”
Players, including Stewart, have said of late that they wanted such a meeting instead of working through lawyers. The league is proposing a revenue-sharing structure based on net revenue, whereas the union is proposing one based on gross revenue. There have been no new proposals in the new year after the latest extension expired on Jan. 9. A league source said the union submitted a proposal on Christmas Day that received no response, because it was essentially unchanged from the prior submission.
Negotiations are continuing in a status quo period, with a moratorium passed on free agency to delay the massive movement expected when all but two of the veterans are unsigned. The league announced its 2026 schedule last week as talks hit the 15-month mark.
“The thing is just sitting down and understanding the relationship and conversation, I think is No. 1, because let's be real, like when we play telephone with people in our own lives, a lot of times things can get scattered,” Plum said. “To be able to sit down face to face and say, ‘This is how I feel, this is how you feel, let's see what we can go from there.’”
Unrivaled held practices in Philadelphia on Thursday ahead of the league’s first set of games outside of Miami. Players made available largely skirted away from CBA conversations, saying they’re focused on what they’re doing at Unrivaled or riding the line that they're unified as a player group. Tiffany Hayes said WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson met with players in Miami last week as they move toward the 100-days-out mark for the season to start on time on May 8.
Lexie Hull, a union representative for the Indiana Fever, said there is pressure as the timeline dwindles and media coverage increases over the lack of a deal.
“People want a season,” Hull told reporters on Thursday. “We want a season. The league wants a season. And so that becomes just a much larger conversation. And I think that's what makes it feel like there's more pressure.”
Messaging from the union has taken two tacks over the last year. Statements from the union and some players have followed hard, stern lines, with Satou Sabally calling an early proposal from the league a “slap in the face.” Others have been more nuanced and direct, describing small blips of progress, the need for compromise and a deal that benefits all.
That lack of unified messaging showed itself again on Friday, indicating schisms among the player base as they face a critical juncture.
Minutes after Plum voiced optimism for an in-person meeting and exited the room in the halls of Xfinity Mobile Arena at the end of her media availability, Philadelphia native Natasha Cloud gave a much more fiery and animated retort, telling the crush of local TV media she was “disgusted with the W and how they’re handling this, and their lack of value, their lack of worth for us, their lack of even trying to attempt to move things with us.”
“We will not f****** move until y'all move,” Cloud said, speaking directly into the closest camera. “And it would be the worst business decision of any business to not literally pay the players that make your business go. Without us, there is no W season. So the pressure is on the WNBA, on [Commissioner] Cathy [Engelbert], on [NBA Commissioner] Adam [Silver], on everyone that is in that front office. Do your job. Negotiate and pay your players, your workers.”
Azurà Stevens, the Los Angeles Sparks player rep, spoke similarly, calling for new WNBA leadership and making clear she’s been preparing for a strike. She said she was not aware of an in-person meeting on Monday.
“I feel like this is ridiculous that we’re waiting this long anyways,” Stevens said. “I just think this all needs to be over. We need to come to something and we either need to play or we don’t. It’s getting dragged out, and it’s honestly just frustrating at this point.”
Category: General Sports
