March 11, 2011

NFLPA decertifies, NFL labor litigation to ensue

In a move that surprised no one, but still sent shockwaves through the American professional sports landscape, the NFL Players Association has applied for decertification after failing to come to an agreement with NFL owners. In renouncing its union status, the NFLPA issued this statement:

“The NFL Players Association announced today it has informed the NFL, NFL clubs and other necessary parties that it has renounced its status as the exclusive collective bargaining representative of the players of the National Football League.

The NFLPA will move forward as a professional trade association with the mission of supporting the interests and rights of current and former professional football players.”

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This move will allow the NFLPA to move forward with an antitrust litigation that the union had been threatening to file for some time. This comes after two weeks of intense negotiations that, while reported to be very contentious, seemed to be progressing, especially after the two sides agreed to extend the Collective Bargaining Agreement an additional week on March 4th.

The breakdown on the final day of negotiations seemed to stem from the league’s unwillingness to disclose its financial data. While the league was willing to give the union a league-wide profit analysis, including sending club-by-club information to a third party that could verify and analyze the documents, the union was more interested in seeing in-depth financials from each team, which would give them information on more than just profitability. Based on litigation that has been filed in past union decertification efforts and other lawsuits, it was found that NFL owners, such as former Eagles owner Norman Braman and current Bengals owner Mike Brown, had paid themselves high salaries and big bonuses, potentially skewing any profitability data that the NFL would provide, not to mention salaries or bonuses paid to the owner’s family members and their related businesses.

While the NFLPA and NFL are trying to find the best way to carve up their $9 Billion pie, President Barak Obama injected himself into the fold, stating “I’m a big football fan, but I also think for an industry that is making $9 billion a year in revenue, they can figure out how to divide it up in a sensible way and be true to their fans who are the ones who, obviously, allow for all of the money that they are making,” the President continued. “My expectation and hope is that they will resolve it without me intervening, because it turns out I have got a lot of other stuff to do.”

Now, because it seems that goodwill and common sense could not ultimately prevail, both the NFL and NFLPA face a potentially dramatic fan backlash that could eventually start cutting into their enormous revenues.

See, NHL circa 2004, which is still struggling to recover from its lost season.

In a move that surprised no one, but still sent shockwaves through the American professional sports landscape, the NFL Players Association has applied for decertification after failing to come to an agreement with NFL owners. In renouncing its union status, the NFLPA issued this statement:

“The NFL Players Association announced today it has informed the NFL, NFL clubs and other necessary parties that it has renounced its status as the exclusive collective bargaining representative of the players of the National Football League.

The NFLPA will move forward as a professional trade association with the mission of supporting the interests…

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