On March 3rd, the current NFL labor agreement between the owners and players is set to expire. The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) and the owners just finished up a week's worth of negotiations and still the two sides seem to be far from an agreement. If the two sides can't come to an agreement by March 3rd, the owners are expected to vote to lock the players out.
If there was a lockout, it would mean that essentially all league activity would stop. Players would not be allowed to use any of the team's facilities to workout or watch film, practices would stop, teams would not be able to sign free-agents or extend any current contracts, and players currently under contract would stop receiving checks until a new collective bargaining agreement is reached.
The owners basically want more money, they feel they got shortchanged in the last collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiations and are trying to take some things back this time around. The owners claim that the players take home 59 percent of the eight billion dollars in annual gross revenues the league generates, the highest percentage of all the major sports (57 percent in the NHL, 55 percent in the NBA, and 43 percent in MLB). The players refute that claim, stating that the owners scrape money off the top to pay for expenses, and therefore they only take home closer to 50 percent. The owners also want the rookie pay-scale to be re-worked, saying that they take too much of a financial risk on these unproven players. Many NFL players actually support this proposal, as a lot of veteran players feel slighted by rookies coming in and making significantly more money than they do before having ever played a snap in the league. The NFLPA, however, is hesitant to agree to lower rookie contract scales unless the excess money is funneled back to the players as opposed to directly into the owners pockets.
The other issue the owners are pushing is an 18-game regular season, which the players oppose staunchly. The owners want the extra revenue that an 18-game season would bring, but they don't want to give extra compensation to the players. They feel that since they would be shortening the preseason by two games, that there will still be the same number of total games in the season, thus they don't have to give anything extra to the players. Of course, the players feel that adding two more meaningful games to the regular season would cause even more injuries. And with the correlation between concussions among NFL players and dementia in former players coming to light, the NFLPA simply cannot support a longer season without more compensation. If the 18-game season is to happen, aside from money, the NFLPA wants a second bye week to rest players and avoid injuries, expanded rosters to help coaches more easily sub players in and out, and a shorter and less rigorous offseason workout program so they can stay fresh throughout the regular season.
Unfortunately the two sides seem miles apart even after a week of talks. The owners however seem to have the upper hand as they will continue to make revenue even during a lockout, through TV contracts and merchandise sales.
The players' union does have a trick up their sleeve though... decertification. Decertification means that the union would be dissolved, which would allow individual players to take the NFL to anti-trust court to try to block the lockout. Confusing I know... here's how it works: as long as there is a union that represents the players, that is to say as long as the NFLPA exists, players are not allowed to take their negotiations outside of the bargaining room. However, if the NFLPA were to dissolve itself before the owners lock the players out, then players would be free to seek an injunction in anti-trust court that could block a potential lockout. If the negotiations did go to court, players could then fight any terms of employment they felt necessary, which could end up being a worse deal for the owners than they could have negotiated themselves. So, the threat of decertification is a powerful bargaining chip for the NFLPA. The head of the NFLPA, DeMaurice Smith, hinted recently that the union would decertify before March 3rd if no new CBA had been reached.
This is how things finally got done the last time the collective bargaining agreement had to be renewed. During the last CBA negotiations in 1993, the NFLPA made significant gains in their negotiations when the decertified. After the union decertified, Reggie White acted as the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the league. The result is the current NFL collective bargaining agreement, which, of course, the owners feel is tilted too heavily towards the players. Clearly the owners want to stop the union from decertification, as history has shown that the players have made much more progress negotiating through the courts as opposed to directly with the owners.
As far as taking sides, of course I'm with the players. But really, it's hard to root for anyone who is splitting up eight billion dollars and crying about it. A lockout on March 3rd is looking like an inevitability, and unless the negotiations go to court, the lockout will probably last deep into the summer, maybe even cutting the regular season short. Hopefully it won't come to that though and these two sides can carve up that eight billion dollars in a mutually beneficial way. Til then though, we'll just have to sit back and wait...
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