Traveller wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 8:03 am
Johnnyg wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 11:19 pm
Traveller wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 8:54 pm
Agreed. My experience of this stuff and I am not a lawyer, but I suspect like most contributors on here I've had experience of the law and employment issues over the years, is that the legal judgements is normally determined around the concept of 'reasonableness' and 'process'. Not the precise letter of a contract.
Did Tigers act reasonably? That is about acting in the greater good. In this case that is in ensuring that employees have jobs to go to in the future. If the board had done nothing, but tried to keep to the agreed contracts Tigers would go bust. Then there would be issues around any process, which is often where it does wrong. But if there is a force majeure clause in contracts (and it would be incredibly if there wasn't) then the impact of Covid would fall into that category.However I have no idea if professional sports contracts fall into some special category - and so fully accept what I've just written could be completely irrelevant in this context. In which case I apologise to y'all!!
Reasonableness is irrelevant. The issue is what is the club obliged to pay in salary and for how long and what are the obligations of the respective parties. Force majeure can only be relevant while the season is suspended and not in relation to future obligations and may well not apply anyway. I don’t need to see these particular contracts to know that there is never ever ever a clause in such a contract allowing the paying party to be entitled to renegotiate based on impecuniosity.
Thanks. As I said above I am not a lawyer and so I have only had experience of employment issues within businesses I'm involved with and none have been connected to professional sport. However I do have direct experience of companies I've been involved with as a Non-Exec invoking salary cut. The companies were taken to tribunal, sued for constructive dismissal, and on every occasion the complainants lost on the grounds described above, in one case even though the tribunal found the company had not applied its own policies when making the cuts. This was post financial crash. So my question is, what is it precisely in the nature of a sports contract held by the famous 5 (6) that makes them different. Genuine question. I know I don't know, and it is clear that experts in the legal profession are going public saying that they will have a claim. What's the exact difference?
I'm sure Johnnyg is right about Tigers being liable for the players' remaining contractual payments - unless the players ask to be released so they can join another club. As soon as they do that the contract is terminated.
If the players decide to remain but are still stood down, the club must continue to pay them their full contractual salary - if they don't, they are in breach of contract and the player can walk away and claim damages. I may be wrong, but I suspect the difference here is that players have fixed term contracts, which are unusual in employment law.
Unless contracted there is no right to be allowed to train or be selected - the club pays a wage, the player makes himself available to to train and play at the club's discretion, simple as that. Individual sponsorship earnings, international earnings and future career earnings are not the responsibility of the current employer - unless specifically contracted, which would be utterly ridiculous. In fact, it is far more likely that the contracts include clauses protecting the club's right to select or train players as it sees fit. Can you imagine the future if it were otherwise? Player sues club because he wasn't picked enough or involved in training enough and claims it has harmed his future/sponsorship/international earning potential. No.
by glenn » Sun Jul 05, 2020 10:07 am
Just a thought or two....
Is it still possible to be stood down and then put into furlough? This would pay up to £2500 a month which one assumes is lower than the "5s" current income. This forcing the 5 out so they don't hold out into their current contract too long?
The 15 contracts to be announced will be those above the "threshold"stated
by Andrea on lttv, the one which protects the lower income members of the squad?
Very possible, not sure it would play well from a PR point of view though. There is also the possibility that the contracts have a provision for being laid off or placed on short time working - but I would think that is incredibly unlikely to be the case for professional sports contracts.
#speedbump
