Cricket http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 confident about reaching agreement with players’ union – Cricket News Update
Cricket Australia CEO http://www.senore.com/Cricket/James-Alexander-Sutherland-c65430 has insisted that the governing body is confident a resolution with the Australian Cricketers’ Association regarding the new pay deal is not far off.
“We just were not able to work through the impasse and, fortunately, we've found a way through that in the last couple of days,” he said. “We're now in a very confident position of having an agreement.”
With the Australian players’ current contracts due to expire by June 30th, negotiations for a new pay deal have been in the works, with both parties aiming to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding before the deadline. However, the CA and ACA
were unable to find common ground when it came to settling the finer points of the new agreement.
The players’ union took issue with Cricket Australia’s new definition of revenue, claiming it would allow the board to withhold amounts of up to 30 million Australian dollars from the players.
Sutherland, however, also refused to move from the board’s stance, arguing that the new deal in fact made players $80 million richer, when compared to the present deal. The differences in the old and new deal lie in the methods for calculating how much revenue
the players are paid. The current deal grants players a fixed 26% - a system which the player’s union and cricketers are in favour of.
However, the CA have decided to implement a performance-based system in the new contracts, in accordance with suggestions from the Argus Review – this would imply that players will be paid more if they win a series 5-0, or defeat a high-ranked team, and
paid less when they lose 0-5, or when they are defeated by a lower-ranked team.
With both parties refusing to budge, a players’ strike appeared imminent, despite the insistences of both captain http://www.senore.com/Cricket/George-Bailey-c1480, both of whom insisted that a strike was the last thing the players wanted, especially as they
were preparing to go into a 5-match ODI tour of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/England-c56013.
However, a recent meeting appears to have yielded promising results, and the disagreement appears to be on its way to a resolution.
“We work through issues from day to day and this is obviously a major one,” Sutherland said while speaking to reporters on Friday. “It's challenging and it's complex and it's important, and I don't think either party expected to be able to walk through this
easily.”
"Inevitably, the willingness on both sides was there to make sure something was done by the end.”
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