CFLPA goes in a new direction, electing Scott Flory as president, but will he communicate?

There's a new man in charge of the CFLPA, even if the organization itself hasn't yet confirmed it. According to Drew Edwards of The Hamilton Spectator, who first reported that the CFLPA was holding a leadership vote Friday in Las Vegas, that vote resulted in Montreal Alouettes' guard Scott Flory defeating incumbent president Mike Morreale. After a 12-year CFL career with the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Morreale went to work as the CFLPA's marketing director in 2007 and became president in 2012. Now, it seems the organization has decided to go in a new direction with Flory. It's going to be interesting to see what impact that has on the contentious ongoing collective bargaining agreement negotiations with the league.

It isn't particularly known what approach Flory plans to take, and that speaks to a central issue with the CFLPA at the moment. At the moment, the organization isn't communicating much to the public. Their website (which is still titled "CFLPA 2011") doesn't appear to have been updated since Feb. 14, and their Twitter feed hasn't posted anything since Thursday; there was no discussion of their meetings this week, the existence of a leadership vote, when that vote was set for, what each candidate stood for, or the results of that vote. If not for Edwards' reporting, the public wouldn't have known the CFLPA was having a leadership vote (or who won it). Granted, the CFLPA exists primarily to serve its members rather than the public, but there still needs to be better communication with the outside world, especially considering that the association is locked in a labour dispute.

There are strong points in favour of the players getting more money in the next CBA, and there's also a good case for their reported demand to have the salary cap be a percentage of league revenues rather than a fixed number, but at the moment, those cases are being made by media members rather than the CFLPA itself. From the association's website and Twitter feed, you wouldn't have a clue that they're involved in CBA negotiations. You also definitely wouldn't know what they want out of those negotiations.

The lack of information from the CFLPA stands in stark contrast to the bounty of it from the CFL, which is not only staying smoothly on message about its own costs ahead of negotiations, but is generally quite transparent about what's going on. For example, consider the announcement of potential rule changes involving replay on pass interference calls; the league sent out a release in advance mentioning it and everything else that was up for discussion at the rules committee, allowed a media member to sit in on that committee, posted the results of that meeting quickly afterwards and even put up a video interview with the head of officiating about the changes later that same day. That's a substantial difference from how the CFLPA has handled their meetings lately, and it illustrates a successful public relations strategy. Yes, changes like the PI rule aren't going to make everyone happy, but by giving everyone notice that this was going on and explaining the proposed changes in detail, the CFL was able to get their side of the story out there, create plenty of constructive discourse and leave fans feeling informed. Internal leadership meetings are a bit different from proposed rule changes, of course, but the CFLPA would be well-advised to learn the power of reaching out to the public from their bargaining opponents.

This may not matter all that much in the end, of course. If the CBA negotiations are resolved purely internally between the league and the players' association, which side did a better job of presenting their case to the public won't be all that relevant. If negotiations stay acrimonious and lead to a work stoppage, though, then communication could be quite important; both sides will need to win over fans and get them to complain to the other side in hopes of getting them to bend. In order to do that, both sides will need to clearly communicate to the public what they want and why they deserve it. The CFLPA hasn't done a particularly great job on that front lately, and they haven't even been particularly informative about what's going on at the association.

We'll see if that changes under Flory. He's a smart guy who's generally been willing to talk to the media over his long career in Montreal, and that might bode well for a new era of CFLPA openness, which could in turn auger well for the organization's chances in bargaining. There's no word on if he'll retire to take this job or keep on playing as well, but in any case, he's been in the league right up until now, so he's certainly familiar with where things are at and what players' concerns are. Flory will undoubtedly have plenty of work to do on the inside, but he should also keep in mind that reaching out to the outside world can matter. The CFLPA has a strong case to earn substantially more money in this next CBA; they just need to start making it.