The Professional Hockey Players\u2019 Association<\/a> announced it \u201ccommenced job action\u201d and cited travel for back-to-back games, a holiday break, guaranteed contracts, health benefits during the offseason and player compensation as unresolved issues in talks on a new collective bargaining agreement.<\/p>\n\u201cOur members are simply seeking reasonable improvements that allow them to work safely and earn a sustainable living while continuing to perform at a high level,\u201d executive director Brian Ramsay said. \u201cDespite the union\u2019s repeated efforts to meet and engage in bargaining, the league has continued to communicate directly with players in a manner that bypasses the union\u2019s role as the exclusive bargaining representative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Members of the PHPA\u00a0voted last week to authorize\u00a0its negotiating committee to call for a strike. The league and union have been engaged in collective bargaining since January.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, union leaders deprived players of the opportunity to vote on our last, best, and final offer,” the ECHL said in a statement, adding it would raise player salaries 20 per cent in the first year, increase per diems, guarantee more off days and expand equipment made available to players. “We did everything possible to avoid this outcome and hope that the union leadership will drop its unworkable scheduling demands, let the players vote on our offer and make it possible for players to return to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The league said its latest offer ups the salary cap by 19.8 per cent, an increase from the 16.4 per cent from the proposal posted to its website Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ECHL made clear to union leadership that this was the best offer and that any future offers likely will need to account for losses in revenue attributable to missed games from a player strike,\u201d the league said in a statement. \u201cWhile we did not receive a formal response, we have heard from certain players that they will not be reporting for their scheduled games.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ECHL has 30 teams, 29 of which are in the U.S. and one in Canada in Trois-Rivi\u00e8res, Quebec.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ECHL postponed 13 games Friday after players went on strike, causing a work stoppage in the North…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-374059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}