Player Safety, Retirement issues dominate latest CBA negotiation session between league, union -NHL Update
The league and labour union were back in the National Hockey League (NHL) offices in Manhattan, New York, continuing lengthy negotiations between each other on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), with player safety and retirement issues dominating
this time.
Both sides held a full committee session on Tuesday, July 31, 2012, and broke it down the following day to focus more on specific issues with specialised stakeholders taking charge. Subcommittees were formed into two groups to overlook the player safety
issues and players’ retirement benefits respectively.
The CBA, which is currently in play and set to expire on September 15, luckily does have a clause which will allow the regular season to go ahead even if a deal is not reach before the deadline.
Working in groups is believed to have addressed the respective issues more effectively and could be termed to be in the pipeline for future negotiations as well.
"I think we had good experiences in the working groups," NHL Deputy Commissioner, Bill Daly, said. "I know the hockey-issues working group met twice already. I think we have some good momentum in those areas."
For the Players’ Association side, special assistant to the executive director of the NHLPA, Mathieu Schneider, was of the view that discussion was ‘healthy’ and both sides kept the same goals in view while negotiating.
This concluded the meetings for this week as both shareholders will now meet in New York again next week, from Tuesday through Friday before the weekend kicks in.
"We actually sat down yesterday and worked out a schedule through the early part of September," Daly added. "We packed more days into the schedule and we scheduled some more meetings for working groups."
The Players’ Association was given a 76,000 page document which had the financial material from each and every club, giving the union something to look at until the next series of talks between the two kick off.
It was met after a request was made from the union while more information is still to be met by the league. What the union now requires is an independent audit of each and every team, which the NHL has not given any firm answer to as of yet.
Tags: