Text of WIPA letter to Roger Brathwaite

July 6, 2005

Mr Roger Brathwaite
Chief Executive
West Indies Cricket Board
Factory Road
St. John's
Antigua

Dear Roger,

We write in response to your letter of 30th June, 2005.

1. The West Indies Players' Association places on record our profound disgust, but not surprise at the decision by the West Indies Cricket Board to proceed to select "another group of players" for the senior team tour of Sri Lanka, as communicated by you first by telephone on the afternoon of June 30th and confirmed in writing by letter of that day, but received by me late that evening. Our disgust and that of the supporters of West Indies cricket has been well summed up by no other person than the Chair of the Caricom Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Cricket, Dr. the Hon. Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada when he stated that "he is appalled by the level of insensitivity being displayed by the WICB in making decisions affecting the regional team" and that "the Board continues to be offered solutions but seems intent on taking West Indies Cricket down a destructive path".

2. WIPA wishes to make it abundantly clear that at the time of your informing us of the Board's decision to select "another group of players" the WICB and WIPA were in active negotiations on the Match/Tour Contract for Sri Lanka and the way forward with respect to other matters in dispute. A noting of the sequencing of communication between the parties clearly supports our position. Thus on June 22nd, subsequent to the meeting with Justice Saunders on June 17th, WIPA submitted a written proposal to you on the way forward. There followed a series of correspondence between the WICB and WIPA in which both parties were identifying proposals, counter-proposals and responses with a view to finding acceptable mechanisms to resolve matters in dispute, including the determination of Clause 5 of the Match/Tour Contract for Sri Lanka. This series of correspondence was in addition to a number of telephone conversations between the author and the recipient of this letter.

3. It was WIPA's view that by June 29th, that is one week after our first proposal, we had arrived at substantial agreement on the matters in dispute. This view was confirmed by us in our letter of that date when we stated "It is WIPA's view that the correspondence between us reveals substantial agreement between the WICB and WIPA on the way forward to resolving the various issues that had been in dispute".

4. We sent two letters to you on June 29th and sought to discuss these with you early on that day. However, this was not possible as you were en route to the Caribbean. We did communicate with Mr. Barry Thomas of the WICB and requested that you make contact with us on your arrival. We tried again on the morning of the 30th to speak with you but got no answer. On the morning of June 30th we received a response to our letter dealing with the adjudication process. It is to be noted that this letter made no reference to any breaking off of negotiations. Given some caveats identified by you in this letter we were, in the early afternoon, in the process of finalizing a formal reply when you informed me that the Board had decided to select another team.

5. It is necessary that we specify the caveats in your letter of June 30th which necessitated our consideration. These were, and we quote, - "As stated in my letter of June 28th the WICB agreed before Justice Saunders that save for disclosures of the Digicel Agreement and issues relating to the content of the Digicel Agreement all other matters will go to mediation".

For the record, while this position was adopted by the WICB before Justice Saunders on June 17th this was not identified by the Board in any of the subsequent letters that formed a part of the series of correspondence between the WICB and WIPA. And further, contrary to what you stated, your letter of June 28th made absolutely no reference to the exclusion of the Digicel agreement.

6. Since this was a new consideration in the correspondence we required some time to consider it. However, while we were seeking to communicate our position on this to you we were informed that the Board had decided to select "another team". Your decision, therefore, represented a unilateral break-off of these negotiations and in all the circumstances extreme bad faith.

7. The WIPA cannot but come to the position that the Board had all along intended to use the presence of the West Indies "A" Team in Sri Lanka as a bargaining chip against WIPA. Thus, from as early as June 26th WIPA had cause to write you expressing our disapproval of the actions of Mr. Tony Howard, Manager of the West Indies Senior Team who was in Sri Lanka and had already held a meeting with members of the "A" Team. The decision to send Mr. Howard to Sri Lanka would have had to been taken several days prior to that and therefore the clear intent of the Board was to negotiate in bad faith. All the correspondence and the apparent consensus that was emerging as a result of the correspondence between the parties was, as is now apparent, merely a tactic on your part to provide the time necessary to obtain, by means fair or foul, the agreement of enough members of the "A" Team to play the Senior Team Tour.

8. This conclusion is further borne out by the facts pertaining to the negotiations with respect to sponsorship fees. In your letter of June 25th, you stated - "We cannot afford your proposal but in the interest of reaching a settlement we are prepared to reopen and negotiate this matter with immediate effect".

Yet in spite of this commitment to "negotiate", at no time during the period June 22nd and June 30th did the WICB move from its position that sponsorship fees would total US $50,000.

9. Consistent with WIPA's position that the contractual issues were of greater priority than the financial consideration, and having regard to the fact that we believed that there was substantial agreement on the way forward re: mediation and adjudication of the contractual matters in dispute, on June 29th we dropped our negotiating position on sponsorship fees from US $200,000 to $150,000. We fully expected the WICB to "negotiate" as you had committed to, and therefore in a spirit of compromise parties could have arrived at a mutually agreed amount. This did not happen. Instead you verbally informed me on the afternoon of the 30th that the Board's position was "we have another team".

10. It is to be noted that your second letter of the 30th was received by us late that evening and it is this letter that we are officially informed of the Board's decision. This is also the letter that, for the very first time, seeks to provide WIPA with the financial details of the sponsorship by Digicel in that you "explain" the relationship between the various figures given by the WICB on the quantum of the Digicel sponsorship. We repeat: at no time during our many months of negotiations did the WICB provide WIPA with information pertaining to the various figures of Digicel sponsorship, as detailed in your letter of June 30th. Yet having only just provided the information - and in the absence of a signed Digicel agreement - WIPA was told in the same breath that there will be no further negotiations for the Sri Lanka Tour since the Board had already selected "another group of players". We cannot reiterate enough that this is bad faith bargaining!

11. It is inconceivable that you could suggest, as you did in your second letter of June 30th that the Board's decision to select "another group of players" for Sri Lanka "could have been avoided had you acted in a timely manner". This erroneous position is also reflected in your comment in the said letter that "In an attempt to have this matter settled well before the Sri Lanka Tour we forwarded the match tour contract to you on June 2nd and it was not until June 26th that we received an indication as to the level of sponsorship fee that you were seeking. Three days later in your letter of June 29th you confirmed this position along with tabling a revised offer of US $150K, some two days before the scheduled departure of the team. The negotiating tactics you have employed yet again are unacceptable by any standard".

12. As we stated earlier there was an intense process of engagement by WIPA in an effort to finalise the Match/Tour Contract. Having regard to the fact that Clause 5 of this said Contract could not be agreed upon in bilateral negotiations between the parties for the recent Home Series, it was WIPA's considered view that only a process of binding arbitration could ensure that there was an accepted Clause 5. We wrote Prime Minister Mitchell on April 1st seeking his intervention to establish such an arbitration process. The fact that no meeting with the Arbitrator took place until June 17th was largely due to the delay by the WICB in communicating its agreement for arbitration. It was clear that the Board was no longer interested in arbitration since: (a) the Home Series proceeded with a Clause 5 that was not agreed to by WIPA; and (b) by various means of pressure most of the players who had been unilaterally deemed "ineligible for selection" by the Board because of their personal endorsement contracts with Cable and Wireless had taken steps which in the Board's view made them eligible once again.

13. It was therefore impossible for any meaningful negotiations to take place until after the meeting with Justice Saunders. It must also be noted, however, that in the first week of June, WIPA was able to conclude negotiations with you for a Match/Tour Contract for the "A" team Tour, in spite of only being informed of this tour on May 24th!

14. We wished to have Clause 5 determined before the Sri Lanka Tour, but following the meeting with Justice Saunders on June 17th we negotiated very actively to arrive at a process that would both allow this to be determined while the tour proceeded and to resolve all other outstanding matters, hence our proposals to you on the 22nd, which did not find favour with you and your response of the 25th which did not find favour with us. These differences in process were minimized by the 29th.

15. With respect to the timing of our discussion on sponsorship fees, as we stated, we focused on what we considered to be the priority issue of the contractual terms pertaining to the players' obligations to the sponsor since agreement on this would determine the level of sponsorship fees. More onerous obligations to the sponsors and greater restrictions on players' rights to engage in personal endorsement contracts would, as we have repeatedly stated in our negotiations, have to be compensated for accordingly. To discuss sponsorship fees before knowing what the obligations were would be to put the cart before the horse. And this is why we only put our position in writing on June 29th after we thought, mistakenly as it turned out, that the contractual matters could be resolved.

16. Having regard to all of the above, it is erroneous and misleading to suggest that we did not act in a "timely manner" or that our "negotiating tactics" are "unacceptable". It should also be noted, for the record, that it was in our "exploratory off the record discussions" (the description used by you in your email of June 25th of the negotiations that were ongoing) that we began to look at narrowing the gap between 17% and 25% of the net annual Digicel sponsorship. However, what this "net" amount represented we were only to be told on June 30th in the very letter in which you advised that the Board had selected "another group of players".

17. We will leave it to others to judge who acted in bad faith and whose actions resulted in the Senior Team being fragmented, the "A" Team being broken up and the morale of all players reduced to an all time low.

18. Having recorded our position with respect to the Sri Lanka Senior Team Tour, we simply wish to restate our proposals on the way forward. These are:

We will be communicating these proposals to the Caricom Prime Ministers who have today determined that they will intervene in the impasse. We trust that their suasion will see the WICB finally agreeing to give effect to a process that would resolve the various matters in dispute. Then and only then can we resume bilateral negotiations that would lead to the concluding of the Retainer Contract, the Standard Match/Tour Contract and the Memorandum of Understanding.

We note your comment that the Board is committed to the setting up of the Collective Labour Agreement, the Retainer Contract and MOU and hope that this is reflected in your actions going forward. As yet another act of good faith, WIPA is prepared to sign the Collective Labour Agreement - on which we have full agreement - once the process on the way forward is agreed upon. We will also agree to meet to finalize the Code of Conduct, on the condition that what we negotiate and agree upon across the table is not subject to change subsequently.

Kind regards,

Dinanath Ramnarine
President and CEO