It's Always Owners vs. Workers, Even in the NFL

The NFL owners' lockout is likely to end this month with owners fucking over players yet again. When it does, remember from Dave Zirn at The Nation:

Mackey was the first president of the NFL Players Association following the NFL-AFL merger. Called “the smartest man in the room” by former Buffalo Bills quarterback and future vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, he rapidly gained a reputation as someone who would stand up to NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle and fight for improved wages, benefits and safety. He rallied disparate players from two different leagues to “one team” and the NFLPA became the first sports union recognized by the National Labor Relations Board. In 1970, Mackey organized the league’s first players’ strike, a victory that earned an additional $11 million in pensions and benefits.

Teammate and former union president Ordell Braase said, “We were a fractured group until John began putting permanence in [the union’s] day-to-day operations, He had a vision for that job, which was more than just putting in time and keeping the natives calm. You don’t get anything unless you really rattle the cage.”

Mackey also went to court and won an antitrust lawsuit that ended what was known as the “Rozelle Rule.” The “Rozelle Rule” dictated that any team that lost a free agent was entitled to receive “equal compensation” from the player’s new organization. Mackey flattened the Rozelle rule in court like it was an undersized defensive back, which set the legal precedent to win true free agency in the sport. In other words, if every one of today’s players sent 10 percent of their paycheck to the John Mackey family, it still wouldn’t equal the cash flow he opened up.

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But the man who first drew a line in the sand around issues of safety and benefits, then became the sport’s most visible victim. Football is a brutal game, where players last 3.4 years and according to one study, die twenty years before the typical American male. Few people had to live with the scars of this sport for longer and with more visibility than John Mackey .... In 2000, he was diagnosed with frontal temporal dementia, a brutal condition that makes Alzheimer’s look like a tender mercy ... Mackey was forced to live in a full-time assisted living facility because of his condition. Initially, the NFL would not pay for it because the official wisdom—and it feels obscene to even type these words—was that there was no link between football and brain injury.

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John Mackey’s death is a tragedy that should remind us of both the price paid by players past for decent wages and benefits and the price every player pays once the cheering stops. As the NFL owners continue to insist on longer seasons http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifand benefit cuts, we should all remember that it’s the players who bear the scar tissue of America’s twenty-first-century pastime. No one should have to be martyred to play this game. Every player now bears an obligation to carry the memory of John Mackey forward so no family ever has to bear the weight that his family was forced to bear with such remarkable grace.

Back in February, Zirn explained why the NFL labor dispute matters to you:

Imagine you are a union member at a workplace that had defied the dire economic straits of recent years and instead seen its annual revenue rise by nearly 50 percent in the past five years. Now, imagine if the owners of that successful entity presented you with the following choice: Either sign a new contract that essentially requires accepting a decrease in your share of revenue and an increase in your workload at your (physically ruinous) job or risk being shut out of work and replaced. Oh, and did I forget to mention the part about how the media will do such a poor job of accurately explaining the situation that most of the public will think you went on strike and thus brand you a greedy bastard?

In a nutshell, that’s where the NFL’s labor negotiations stand right now as the owners and players’ union head into the final two weeks of the current collective bargaining agreement. Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, one of the few sportswriters who hasn’t succumbed to the league’s wooing and carefully constructed talking points, summed it up better than I could yesterday:

“[The owners] believe they are entitled to make money every year, even in the midst of disastrous recessions. They think they are owed a living…The core issue is this: Owners resent the fact that a lot of [fans’] money is going into the pockets of players, instead of into their own.”

How much is “a lot” of money, according to the owners? Well, last year, players took home around 53% of the league’s $9.3 billion in annual revenue, leaving the owners with a measly 47% of the cut. Doesn’t seem so unfair to me, especially since the players are the ones, you know, actually playing the games and risking injury.

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That’s right, Richardson and the other NFL owners are now suggesting that they were somehow duped by the NFLPA, which has a longstanding reputation as the worst, most ineffective players’ union in professional sports. (Despite it being the most violent of professional team sports, where the average playing career barely lasts three seasons, pro football continues to be the only one without guaranteed contracts.) If only Richardson and his innocent billionaire buddies had had the means to hire a few lawyers so they could negotiate a better deal from those scheming players!

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OK, you might argue, but why should I really care about a contract dispute between millionaires and billionaires when real middle-class labor battles, like the inspiring public sector protests and teacher walkouts happening in Wisconsin, are brewing elsewhere around the country? First of all, to pick a nit, most NFL players aren’t actually millionaires—the median salary in 2010 stood at just under $800,000. Of course, that's enough to pay a dozen good teachers (and I ought to know, my wife is one of them), but it’s not just players that will be affected if the owners execute a lockout. According to a union estimate, an NFL work stoppage lasting through 2011 could cost each NFL city $140 million in lost revenue and result in thousands of good-paying middle-class jobs.

But beyond that micro-economic impact is a larger, cultural one. Right or wrong, for many Americans, the current NFL labor dispute represents another, highly visible symbol of the battle between employers and employees, management and union. And it’s importance arises from the fact that the current dispute very clearly demonstrates that even when a business is experiencing unsurpassed popularity and enjoying lucrative profits, that company’s ownership still cannot be expected to share those spoils with its employees without the force of collective bargaining power.

Indeed, the NFL’s increasingly belligerent negotiating tactics, following hard on the heels of what was a wildly successful Super Bowl, in a way, also gives the lie to all the talk of sacrifice being spouted by so many Republican elected officials nowadays. People like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (who seems to fancy himself a modern day Orville Faubus) and Ohio Governor John Kasich try to cloak their draconian public sector layoffs and anti-union legislation as necessary measures to survive these troubled times, but that’s just a convenient excuse. In reality, their fondness for hollowing out collective bargaining power and assaulting real wages isn’t born out of dire circumstances. Instead, these policy choices spring forth from the same old-fashioned conservative mindset that fueled the rise of the Robber Barons more than a century ago and that propels their modern day counterparts in the NFL today—squeezing labor in every way possible, in good times and in bad.

Liberals support workers against exploitative, greedy owners. Liberals support union members. I'm a Liberal and I love football.