WNBA players' union director doesn't rule out work stoppage: ‘As long as it takes'
Women's National Basketball Players Association executive director Terri Jackson said Thursday the union is committed to negotiating 'for as long as it takes' on a new collective bargaining agreement and didn't rule out a potential work stoppage.
'There's no better moment than right now for women's sports and particularly for women's basketball and particularly for us,' Jackson said. 'So are we seizing on every level? Absolutely.'
Jackson spoke with reporters, including The Post, for roughly 15 minutes after being featured on a panel about motherhood in sports at the ESPNW Summit, in what was her first detailed update on the ongoing CBA negotiations. The current CBA expires at the end of the 2025 season.
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Increased player salaries, implementing a softened salary cap, expanded rosters, better access to family planning services and players having a seat at the table for media rights negotiations are some of the hot-button issues at the forefront of negotiations.
3 Caitlin Clark dribbles the ball during an Indiana Fever game in 2024.
AP
The WNBPA has submitted multiple proposals to the league as of Thursday, Jackson said. The goal is to have made 'significant progress' in hammering out the new deal by WNBA All-Star, which is scheduled for July 18-19, and to have a deal finalized by the time the current deal expires at the end of this season.
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'We've been aggressive in terms of our discussions, our proposals – plural – and our meeting schedule,' Jackson said. 'It's a group project. We've doing our part of it, and we're just hopeful that the league sees the opportunity to have those kinds of milestones really in place, like work towards significant progress. It's not just a catch phrase – significant progress by the halfway points and work toward completion by Oct. 31.'
CBA negotiations will continue to be a major storyline for the upcoming WNBA season, which opens May 17. A work stoppage is not out of the question if they can't reach a deal.
The WNBA didn't immediately return The Post's request for comment.
WNBA players opted out of the current CBA last October, giving the league and WNBPA more than a year to hash out a new deal.
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The current CBA, which was agreed to in 2020, was lauded as historic. It drastically increased players' salaries and improved other benefits. But the new contract is expected to upstage the previous deal in a lot of ways.
3 WNBA union director Terri Jackson is pictured in 2022.
AFP via Getty Images
Jackson said the WNBPA is also hoping to restructure the current hard salary cap.
'There might be one exception and that's certainly not enough,' Jackson said.
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WNBA player benefits include family planning services, which offers a stipend and other resources for veterans with at least eight years of service. Jackson said the players union is hoping to make benefits like that more accessible.
Jackson also said it's important for chartered flights to be codified.
'Certainly we can't come this far from last season and this season then start going backwards that won't be accessible,' Jackson said. 'I don't think anybody on the league or the team side wants that.'
For example, under the current CBA, if a player gets pregnant while under contract, she would be paid her full salary while on maternity leave. However, her salary would also count toward a team's salary cap in her absence, which complicates matters.
'There are softer exceptions to what we have now that I think play to the league and the team side of the house as much as they do to advantage and benefit the players,' Jackson said. 'We negotiated things that made sense [in 2020] and that we thought were great but as we saw them implemented and we saw them play out, we realized both sides of the table realize there's some give there… There's some cleanup there. We're not going to have it quite that soft, but it certainly has to be softer than where it is.'
3 Sabrina Ionescu celebrates after the New York Liberty won the 2024 WNBA title.
Michelle Farsi for the NY Post
Jackson said 'there's probably even more' alignment between owners and players in this round of negotiations than in 2020.
Still, Jackson believes players have plenty of power in this round of conversations.
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Unrivaled's success, paired with several potential 2025 WNBA draft lottery picks (including former Notre Dame star Olivia Miles and LSU forward Flau'jae Johnson) staying in college for another season, bodes well for the players union.
'There are so many players that got my attention. I believe they got the league and the team's attention, too, who decided to take that fifth year and stay in college and did not come here, did not take that opportunity to enter the WNBA draft,' Jackson said. 'That strengthens the union side and the player side of things because that means that pipeline is even that much stronger.'
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