New Year, New NHL Mediation

The National Hockey League (NHL) and its player's union (NHLPA) caucused separately with a federal mediator this week with looming deadline to reach a deal and possibly salvage a shortened season approaching next week. The two sides met with Deputy Director Scot Beckenbaugh of the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service (FMCS) in New York, but there's no still no decision on whether the league and union would hold face-to-face negotiations. With half of the 2012-13 regular season already lost to the labor dispute, the NHL has set next Friday as the deal deadline, so that a shortened 48-game season could be feasible. The lockout, which costs almost $20 million a day, began last fall when the previous collective bargaining agreement expired with both sides disagreeing over how to split over $3 billion in revenue. The current dispute, echoing a lockout that erased the entire 2004-05 season, is now focused on the salary cap for the 2013-14 season, the pension fund and length of player contracts. See http://yhoo.it/X6RxZ8 and http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=648934

NHL Faceoff following failed Mediation

National Hockey League owners and NHLPA member players will meet tomorrow, resuming labor talks following failed efforts by federal mediators last week. In hopes of reaching a new collective bargaining agreement and ending a player lockout, owners and players will meet alone, face- to-face, without league and union officials or mediators. Some owners attending the meeting have not previously done so which is seen as encouraging. Hockey's labor dispute has already resulted in cancelling more than a third of the NHL regular season, including the Winter Classic and the All-Star Game. It is very unlike the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to throw up its hands, saying it would be not productive to continue discussions, and that they would rather call the parties back together when they thought the time was right. Seems the parties to this one thought otherwise. We'll see if that move of self-determination ends the dispute or the season. See more in Bloomberg story at http://buswk.co/VpXGCG