Labour Union terms Latest Offer as what should have been First Offer -NHL Lockout Update
After the National Hockey League’s (NHL) latest proposal made on Tuesday, the ball is in the Players’ Association’s court and all eyes are on executive director Donald Fehr to make the next call.
The league and labour union will be meeting for the second time this week on Thursday to continue negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement, but for most participants, if the owners had made this offer right from the start, they would not have been seeing a lockout right now.
Both stakeholders were talking again on Wednesday, but not face-to-face, which is still a good sign as it seems things are finally moving in the right direction. The sooner, the better for the regular season as NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman raised the hopes of fans by saying that there is still hope for an 82-game regular season, if they manage to work it out before November 2nd.
"It's good that we had a long conference call [today] because it means that we actually had something to talk about,” said one player to CSNNE.com. “It's a step in the right direction. If the league's latest offer was the first offer that we received months ago then we'd be playing hockey right now."
“The league has finally put forth a proposal that looks like it is in good faith,” said the CSNNE.com NHLPA source. “After analyzing the proposal, the negotiating committee will be acting accordingly over the next couple of days.”
In order to keep in touch with reality, the Players’ Association has cautioned its members to approach with care and not take this offer to be a “done deal” as there are still many things both sides need to reach a consensus on. Until and unless the core economic issues are discussed and agreed upon, there will not be a regular season.
The 2012-2013 NHL regular season was scheduled to start on October 11, 2012, but unfortunately, due to a deadlock between the league and labour union, it was forced to be cancelled two weeks in. Hopes and optimism are there for Thursday’s meeting, but only time will tell what the outcome really is.
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