After months of negotiations and two weeks of mediation failed to produce a new contract, the NFL Players Association chose the nuclear option today, voting to decertify their union. Why?
The group is seeking an injunction to bar owners from locking out the players, and they likely will be successful. Because there’s no longer a union with which to collectively bargain, NFL teams are now in peril of running afoul of antitrust laws.
Clever, clever. Let nobody tell you football players are just a bunch of dumb jocks.
That said, this latest breakdown in negotiations doesn’t bode well for fans looking forward to a season of professional football next fall… though for Seahawks fans, that’s pretty much the norm.
Very smart.
Besides, we’ve always got the Huskies!
Can you explain how the owners would violate anti-trust laws without a players union to bargain with? Thanks!
best thing i’ve seen written on this was actually during the season… ‘the fans aren’t likely to be very understanding if the owners & the players can’t decide how to divide up a gazillion dollars during a recession.’
Normally, decertifying a union as an employee group’s collective bargaining representative is BAD news, but in this case,
the “former” NFLPA is pulling off a risky, albeit potentially lucrative ploy by so doing, since it effectively restricts the owners from exercising any number of ploys on their side without running afoul of federal anti-trust laws.
Just made this one very interesting game of brinksmanship, which, in my mind at least, is going to be far more intriguing to watch than a typical Sunday afternoon grunt-fest.
Actually, this is particularly bad for the Seahawks, and any other team looking to upgrade via free agency/trade. And they had a good season last year. Remember how everyone was saying at the start of the season that they’d be fighting the Rams for 4th place in the West, that it was a “rebuilding” year? Made the playoffs & won a game, that was the widest prediction/result margin in the league.
Good thing we’ve got the Sounders then, @5.
College football just got a whole lot more interesting, I’d guess.
Interesting, in a I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-tribal-voyeurism sort of way. Meanwhile, nothing on Slog today about the GIGANTIC labor protests of non-millionaires. C’mon, Goldy.
@2:
I believe it has to do with the fact that without the union, there would be 32 separate clubs (companies, so to speak) conspiring to stop labor in a single industry which, to my knowledge, would break anti-trust laws.
But I’m not an attorney so don’t take my word for it.
@2:
As I understand it, removing the NFLPA as the players’ collective bargaining representative and reorganizing it as a trade association serves several purposes: first, it essentially nullifies any historical relationship between players and owners, and the disbanded NFLPA no longer has any role to play in subsequent negotiations – in short, the owners will no longer be negotiating with a collective of players, but must now negotiate with each player individually. Second, by redefining themselves as a trade organization, the players are asserting that they are now each an independent business entity, rather than a collective of employees, which severely limits the owners’ ability to utilize sweeping, across-the-board actions such as a lockout, since (at least according to one interpretation of the Sherman anti-trust law), such a general, all-encompassing action could be construed as collusion on the part of the owners, who would then be effectively engaged in restrictment of trade against the players, since they would be denying individual members of the trade association from negotiating one-on-one with individual owners for their services. Doing so would leave the owners’ group vulnerable to a class action lawsuit on the part of individual players for restricting their ability to freely trade their services (which in fact, several players have already done.)
It’s all very complicated, and I don’t claim to even begin to understand all the nuances of it, but I think what I’ve described above boils down the basic elements of why the players have employed this tactic.
You know, I’m starting to wish I’d taken labor law in law school.
If all parties involved had to wear a full set of pads while negotiating, things would be resolved much more quickly.
@2The NFL has been exempt from certain federal labor and anti-trust laws because of their ‘special situation’ and because they had a union to bargain with.
Without the union, those exemptions go away and the NFL has to behave like any other group of employers.
Football players ARE a bunch of dumb jocks, but they’re also a bunch of RICH, dumb jocks.
Money buys clever lawyers.
OuterCow@7:
Goldy has taken it upon himself to cover labor, but Goldy is all talk and no action.
Goldy works for the scab paper. When is Goldy gonna call Yoko down at the Guild and seek help to organize this scab rag?
Cheapjack Stranger publisher Tim Keck and Dan Savage earn huge profits exploiting the writers and unpaid interns.
It is totally about the antitrust exemption.
BUT, the Fed is not involved, and the various parties can end their suits any time they want. Look for an agreement about the time training camp should start. Until then, why settle?
Union?
Do millionaire players get their entourages to picket for them by circling stadiums in Esplanades?
@15: Why?
Because with no CBA, and no anti-trust exemption, the NFL cannot hold a draft: every football player coming out of college is a free agent and can’t be “drafted” if he doesn’t want to be. You think any good player is going to opt to sign up with Buffalo, or Carolina, or any other eternally crappy team? Hell no.
In fact, any college player of ANY age is now a free agent and can sign with a team if he wants to. I figure this either gets settled before the scheduled draft, or we’re likely to see at LEAST a shortened season and possibly no season at all.
And I don’t really care. Just find it interesting.
@6 if the NFL tanks the season over this then it’s only good news for the MLS and Sounders, especially if 2011 is even half as fun as as the 2010 Sounders were. Bring it on!
Meanwhile I weep for my Giants as you Seahawks fans weep for the lost chances of Super Bowl glories.
@5
Somehow being 7-9 and the worst team to make the playoffs EVER and a single amazing effort by an individual player is a good year? sub .500 record, earning a not very good draft spot is a good year?
Wow, some homers are delusional.
If Goldy wants a raise I’m sure he’d ask Savage to see how much he and The Stranger had made. Good luck, Goldy!
The NFL has only limited exemptions from the antitrust laws (unlike MLB, which has a broad exemption; that’s why you sometimes see a USFL or XFL try to get started, but never a competitor to MLB). One exemption permitted the AFL and NFL to merge. Another exemption permits the NFL to negotiate a single TV contract, rather than making each team do its own negotiating. But in the absence of a union, the teams cannot collude to lock out workers. (There is no antitrust exemption from labor laws.) No union, no lockout.