The Mysteries of the MLS Labor Showdown

By Nordecke Luchador

Tune in this Tuesday to World Football Daily with Stephen Cohen and Kenny Hassan, when the head of MLS Solidarity will expose Don Garber, Mark Abbott and the other suits in the MLS front office for the soulless, shortsighted, corporate thugs that they are. The specific time will be announced Monday. As the Nordecke Luchador prepares to face the U.S. Soccer Nation, he offers this blog post to put the current labor struggle into perspective.

The Three Mysteries of the MLS Labor Showdown:

Mystery No. 1: What does the league want? Commissioner Garber has spoken  in Orwellian Doublespeak from the beginning, saying such nonsense as: "We remain hopeful" and "We will not agree to any deal that compromises the long-term viability of the league." But the league bosses have never once explained exactly why they believe the league cannot give the majority of players guaranteed rather than "semi-guaranteed" contracts and keep the league economically viable.  "Semi-guaranteed" means nothing. The current structure is so slanted in favor of the owners that it is an international embarrassment. 

  

Mystery No. 2: Where is the Union leadership? At a time when they clearly should be making their case forcefully and vocally, the Players Union has been silent. Sure, both the league and the players have agreed to a gag order imposed by Federal Mediator George H. Cohen, but there are ways around such an order that a savvy union could use to make their case to the public.  The home page for the MLS Players Union lists this top "news" item: Chicago Fire sign Dutch Player Collins John. There is nothing on the site about the most important moment in the history of the league, the union and perhaps American soccer history. The Union doesn't even acknowledge that there is a dispute and explain why they can't talk. The most recent "news release"  is an Aug. 14,2008, statement about the SuperLiga. . 

So kudos to Toronto FC defender Nick Garcia who broke the silence last week when he said he expects the players to strike if a new collective bargaining agreement is not negotiated before the start of the regular season. Article Here. 

But it remains a mystery why Bob Foose and the other union leaders don't find ways to garner more public understanding and support for their cause. If the public understood just how poorly the players are treated by the current CBA relative to every other major sports league, they might understand that this isn't a battle between million dollar athletes and million dollar owners.  This is about  a league that wants to maintain the status quo and continue to treat the product on the field (the labor) as second class citizens.  

Union President Bob Foose and the players are working to alter the structure of MLS player contracts. The current agreement offers few guaranteed contracts and "semi-guaranteed" contracts are anything but a legal, binding set of obligations by the league as they allow the team bosses to cut players before July 1 without having to fullfill their obligation under the terms of the original agreement  

Equally important there is no free agency, so a player who gets cut by the single-entity league has virtually no chance to seek employment on another team.  After players are released their teams retain their rights which forces other teams to trade for those rights if they want to sign that player.  This makes it very difficult for the players to negotiate in order to find a new home.  As such, they don't even own their own labor, which in this case is the talent they bring to the field as one of the best soccer workers in the entire US.  Remember, they aren't cut by their team per se, they are cut by the entire league.  This is tantamount to a worker at GM being fired and then prevented from taking his skills over to Ford.  In the rest of the working world it's called collusion, and it's unconstitutional and about as American as Vietnam, Halliburton and the River Rouge Massacre.  The end result is that players are entangled in options that maximize the power of the league over individual players to an extent that no American worker would tolerate.

The whole system is highly exploitive of lower-level players who are left with sweatshop wages and no measure of control over their careers. (Keep in mind, for example, that the Crew's Steven Lenhart’s base salary in 2009 was less than $34,000. This was a huge increase over his 2008 salary of $12,900 when he was on the developmental squad, but hardly the wage of someone whose skills place him in the top 1% of all American soccer workers).  For more on MLS salaries, read  this article from the Luchametric archive.

All the union wants is a collective bargaining agreement that is consistent with US sport economics and US labor values and that abides by the same rules as the rest of the soccer planet under FIFA. 

For a detailed analysis of the many injustices built into the present system by the MLS, read this article by the Houston Chronicle's Jose De Jesus Ortiz.     

Mystery No. 3: Who are the scabs? Reports have been inconsistent on the exact number of players who voted to strike last week. Steven Goff reported in his Soccer Insider "Blog" that the vote was 350-2. ESPN's Jeff Carlisle and other sources have reported the vote was 383-2. But no one has denied the story that the players voted overwhelmingly to strike if a deal is not reached by 12:01 March 23. And all reports are that there were only two dissenters. MLS Solidarity is working its networks to uncover the names, and when discovered they will be reported at www.Luchametric.com.

  

There are two sides to every struggle: What side, you on?

Crew Capitalists Paying Workers Fairer Wages

The oligarchs who control the means of production at the Columbus Crew have dramatically increased the average salaries they pay their players in 2009 over 2008, according to a Nordecke Luchador analysis of numbers released last week by the MLS Players Union.

The Crew now ranks 7th out of the 15 MLS teams in 2009 in per player average annual salary compared to 2008 when the MLS Cup winners ranked dead last out of 14 (the 2009 numbers include expansion Seattle Sunders).

The average Columbus Crew player this year will be paid $133,430. This is an 85 percent increase over the 2008 Columbus average of $71,949.

The lion’s share of the overall payroll hike is attributable to only a handful of players. Guillermo Barros Schelotto’s salary more than doubled from $375,000 to $775,000. Also among the big winners were MLS Defender of the Year Chad Marshall (a 116 percent salary increase, from $148,000 to $320,000), Robbie Rogers (a 60 percent increase, from $57,500 to $92,500), and Adam Moffat (a whopping 171 percent increase, from the measly $17,700 he made in 2008 as a developmental roster player to a more respectable $48,000). Also accounting for the total increase were a large number of players moving from the developmental basement to the regular roster.

Some great players got the shaft: Frankie Hejduk and Pat Noonan are the only two players with no raise this year (both making $175,000). While this is probably due to the current status of their contracts, it’s a little hard to swallow, particularly with Frankie.

Three other players only got 5 percent: Andy Gruenebaum ($34,650), Duncan Oughton ($79,380) and Eddie Gaven ($173,250).

Source tell El Luchador that the franchise was able to eke out the cash to make the salary increases through a combination of the allocation money extracted from Seattle in the Sigi Schmid fiasco, along with expected revenue increases due to the MLS Cup win: more season ticket sales, CONCACAF revenue, merchandise and other revenue increases.

Los Angeles Galaxy still tops the list with an average per player annual salary of more than $404,000. Of course, most of this is because of David Beckham’s ludicrous salary, and while it remains to be seen how the Milan deal ultimately will effect the final numbers, the Galaxy will still be by far the highest paid team in MLS, and they probably won’t make the playoffs again.

The lowest spot is now occupied by Chivas USA at just over $86,000.

It is a very good sign that the Crew has moved out of the bottom of the league not just in performance on the field but also in paying the workers a living wage.

A note about the numbers:
Salary information was provided by the MLS Players Union and is current as of March 3, 2009. All player salaries are broken down into two numbers. The first is the player's current base salary. The second is characterized as annual average guaranteed compensation. El Luchador bases his analysis on the annual average guaranteed compensation. The annual average guaranteed compensation number includes a player's base salary and all signing and guaranteed bonuses annualized over the term of the player's contract, including option years. For example, if a player has a base salary of $50,000, has a two-year contract with two one-year options and received a $10,000 bonus when he signed, his average annual guaranteed compensation would be $52,500 (base salary plus signing bonus ($10,000), with the signing bonus divided by the number of years covered by the contract (4)). The average annual guaranteed compensation number also includes any annual marketing bonus to be received in the current year and any agent's fees annualized over the term of the contract. The average annual guaranteed compensation figure does not include performance bonuses because there is no guarantee that the player will hit those bonuses. These figures include compensation from each player's contract with MLS. They do not include any compensation from any contracts with individual teams or their affiliates. The numbers in this 2009 analysis are slightly different that a 2008 analysis done by El Luchador. In that study the base salary and the guaranteed compensation were averaged together. However, all comparative numbers in the 2009 analysis are apples to apples.

Crew Gets More For Less

The Columbus Crew not only won their first MLS Cup and the Supporters Shield in 2008, they did it with the cheapest payroll in major league soccer, a Nordecke Luchador analysis has found.

With an average salary of $79,949, the Columbus Crew ranked dead last in the amount it paid its field workers in 2008. The second cheapest team, Chivas USA ($74,723.37), paid its players nearly 4 percent more on average than Columbus.

The team with the most generous average payroll, the Galaxy, paid its players an average of $278,181, nearly four times as much as the Crew. Of course, this figure is somewhat skewed by the ridiculous salary paid to David Beckham.












El Luchador based his analysis on the official numbers from the MLS Players Union. The salary listed for each individual player is an average of that player’s base salary and his guaranteed compensation. For a copy of the Excel database, email nordeckeluchador@hotmail.com.

On the one hand, it is a tribute to the hard work and talent of the players that they had the best performance with the worst compensation. On the other hand, the capitalists who run the Crew factory should be ashamed of themselves, and should look to increase compensation in the coming year as certain contracts come up for renegotiation.

Here’s a look at some key numbers:

• Guillermo Barros Schelotto, the league MVP and MVP of the MLS Cup, who was snubbed in the MLS All-Star game, was the 16th highest paid player in 2008 at $312,500.
  
• Schelotto was the only Crew player in the top 20.
  
• The second highest paid Crew player was mid-season acquisition Pat Noonan, who earned $175,008 and was the 45th highest paid player in the league.
  
• The highest paid goalkeeper in the league was San Jose’s Joe Cannon at $213,000.
  
• By position across the league, goalkeepers are the lowest paid ($58,147), followed by defenders ($74,792).
  
• Midfielders are paid the most on average ($156,498), but if you remove Beckam’s unearned and exorbitant pay, the number is actually $114,000, making forwards the highest paid at $134,916.