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NFL Players Kick Off Season in Show of Solidarity
In the words of sportscaster Al Michaels: “Nothing like a labor statement to start a season.”
Last night, right after the national anthem at the kickoff of the NFL season, players for the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints came out on the field holding up their index fingers. But this was not the usual gridiron “We’re Number 1″ bravado. It was a statment by the players that off the field they “stand as one” in collective bargaining talks with the team owners.
Like workers everywhere, the members of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) are facing the possibility of being out of work if owners lock them out next season. So the players who push, block, tackle and generally rough each other up on the field are sending a message to fans and the owners that they will work together off the field to make sure they are treated fairly.
The players have set up a website to explain their position and to get out the facts about team owners’ revenue and their plans for a lockout. Check out 2011 Lockout Central here.
Jared Allen, Minnesota Vikings defensive end and a player representative, talks about the importance of the players “standing as one” in an interview on the NFLPA site:
I think that’s the only way we’re going to accomplish what we want to accomplish. We have to be able to decide on something and stand as one on it because we are stronger accomplishing something that way than we are standing apart. Not everybody is on the same financial ground. Together, we can be strong and accomplish what we want to accomplish.
By the way, for those who didn’t see the game, the Super Bowl champion Saints won 14-9.
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5 Comments
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I heard that the guy leading the charge for a lot of players is actually Tom Brady – another reason to be a New England Patriots fan.
Billy Thomas and Paul: your crass ignorance and glittering generalities are way over 50 years old. How about going back to the 1920s or before ? Don’t worry about CEOs and CFOs and
interlocking directors, they’ve always had their unspoken and secretive “unions, ” as have professionals of all pin stripes, such as AMA, ABA, CPAs, Financial Advisors, Stock Brokers, etc.
Football players aren’t even in the same league with those pros, not even on a level playing field with their owner masters.
You’re worried about self-serving union leadership ? Union elections are governed by law and secret ballot. Corporate and business chiefs are appointed by the crony system behind closed doors. Thirty years ago you smug critics were busiy making federal cases out of machinists and airline mechanics and steel workers and auto workers making $30,000 a year plus healthcare and retirement benefits. Greedy Unions you said, all the while, bargaining units and individual workers were were busted, dismantled, decertified and the manufacturing base shipped offshore. Productivity increased phenomenally but wages declined, jobs disappeared and CEOs, CFOs, Investment bankers and M &A lawyers paid themselves six-seven-eight figure salaries and bonuses, while looting their companies and ruining our national economy, not to mention the lives, livelihoods and communities abandoned, exploited and sabotaged. Corporate management misused and stole retirement funds, demanded “give backs” and “take aways” from declining union memberships and provoked strikes in order to hire permament striker replacements. And you say we don’t need unions today in this decimated economy ? You simply don’t know what you’re talking about. Or you’re nothing but paid propagandists. In either case, you’re at the bottom of the gene pool in discussing labor relations and labor laws and the conditions of labor in the U.S. today.
Are we supposed to e impressed that these overpaid dudes are trying to protect their millionaire lifestyles?
When I read the headline I expected to read an article about how the “union” made some kind of gesture to support the underpaid workers in the stadium concession stands or made a statement in support of public employee pensions, or maybe they threw off their Nike shoes and called for better working conditions for sweatshop laborers.
Not to be, apparently; just the same old self-interest.
And we are supposed to applaud Tom Brady, who supported the anti-union, anti-worker war criminal GW Bush because Brady is leading the charge to protect the salaries for his fellow ballers?
Until the NFLPA makes some real gestures in solidarity with real workers, the organization is just a business club for elite athletes.
Paul you may be right. The thought that the NFL player millionaires need a union evokes for me that maybe we should also support a union for CEOs. Over a certain income the argument for a union becomes a little weak.
I do think though that defensive linemen should have their own union as they don’t last long and can barely walk. Kind of like gladiators – doomed to a painful and shorter life.
I am still not clear on the point of unions today copmpared to 50 years ago given that so many US laws (FLSA, FMLA, ADA) now protect basic rights.
I am starting to think that unions seem most interested in protecting their own leadership and arguing for their illegal immigrant members and highly paid government employees. In short, unions seem to be bankrupting the countrty.
Billy Thomas: The only overpaid public workers are city managers and department heads, not union members. You need to check the facts, not repeat BS; most public workers earn less than workers doing comparable jobs in the private sector, with the hope that their benefits won’t be taken away by anti-union zealots, fiscally irresponsible fund managers and Wall Street speculators.
Meanwhile the masses watch your gladiators play ball until they suffer concussions and wrecked knees; they obviously need a union to protect their ability to retire with some kind of health care.
But the NFLPA has done nothing in solidarity with real workers or to take a stand against exploitation of workers who make their jerseys, much less call for an end to taxpayers having to subsidize stadiums owned by millionaires.