Collective Bargaining in US Professional Sports - Research Paper Example

Collective Bargaining in US Professional Sports Collective Bargaining is Sports A common phenomenon in the civilized history of America is that, employees have the tendency of forming concerted unions in order to rectify the employers’ oppressive rules. Following the common assertion that professional athletes have been perceived to be more of ‘’slaves’’ or ‘’peons’’, and the fact that the sports industry is proving to be one of the most flourishing enterprises in the US, unionization is taking course to realize that both the players and the league owners reach particular agreement on how to compensate and be compensated[Cym99]. The unionization has in fact reached the point that, the recognized exclusive bargaining agents in the name of players' associations currently represent players in the negotiations with the club owners. The collective bargaining agreement of many leagues normally contains also the league's constitution and its bylaws. Following the context of professional sports, collective bargaining agreement refers to the agreement arrived at between the particular players of a league and the league owners after negotiations. The emergence of this particular countervailing power in the sports industry has since created much impact on the structure of the organized professional sports. This research is aimed at finding out the various collecting bargaining ways in various US professional sports including the NFL, NBA, NHL and the MLB. The National Football League (NFL) All the professional athletes employed under the NFL clubs and other clubs in the United States professional sports league are unionized to form a better bargaining power. This is in accordance with the requirement of the National Labor Relations Act that want that any employer must unionized its employees in order to be able to bargain in good faith. The employees’ unions are expected to bargain with respect to hours, wages and other terms and conditions of employment. The other terms and conditions of employment the bargain covers include division of league revenues, free agency requirements, players’ mobility restrictions, provisions regarding the drafting of players, disciplinary rules, among others. In this case, the employers are barred from making unilateral employment rules changes in regard of the issues required by the NLRA to be negotiated between the two parties-the employers and employees. Another issue that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has found relevant to bargain about between the employers and the representative of the unionized employees are the drug policies that require testing. Therefore, for any setting or moderation of any drug policy, the union must bargain with the league. In this drug issue, it is reported that the NFL has a superior drug policy since it provides a comprehensive list of banned substances, keeps on testing players during the preseason, regular season, postseason and even during off-season, it gives the testing authority more discretion under the reasonable cause testing clause, applies beyond players to team personnel and provides harsher disciplinary to the violators of this policy. For instance, as the NFL carries out its testing all year round, the NBA tests only during training camps and MLB tests only during the season. Another difference is that NFL tests all players and non players while the NBA policies only tests players alone[Dan112]. According to the collective bargaining agreement signed by the NFL in 2001, the issue of how revenue should be split between players and owners was hotly contested. The results were that the players would receive 47-48.5% of the total revenue, this would be 4% less than what they used to receive initially. Unlike in the previous agreement, the owners were no longer allowed to take $1 billion before the revenue is split. This players’ union managed to bargain so that this issue got solved. Not every issue that was discussed in this bargaining session was changed. For instance, the number of regular season games that encompass each NFL season. In this matter, the owners wanted to increase the number of games in a season which of course would increase the revenue for both sides, but will not consider the strain that players’ health and body would go through. The players’ representative argued that the players indulge in immense training during the sixteen week regular season to an extent that adding any more games would only have lasting effects on their health both during their stay and after their stay at the National Football League[Bri12]. NBA Collective Bargaining Reflecting on the bargaining timeline for NBA beginning June 21, 1995, the owners and the union agreed to a six year deal. After less than 2 weeks, (July 1, 1995), the NBA commissioner announced a lockout after the players rejected the agreement that was agreed upon between the owners and the players’ union. In this case, the players claimed that they were not well represented in a fair bargaining with the union. Another agreement was arrived at in August 8, 1995 between the two parties. During this agreement, the agreement was presented to the players who accepted it by a vote of a simple majority. The agreement was later approved by the union leaders in September 13, 1995. After the ratification of the contract with a team of owners, the NBA players and owners later agreed on a six-year, $5 billion collective bargaining agreement. When it reached March 23, 1998, the owners voted to reopen the 1995 collective bargaining agreement. The players were then locked out on July 1, 1998 by the owners and later a tentative agreement was arrived at in January 6, 1999. By January 7, 1999, the lockout officially ended and a collective agreement was arrived at. This was expected to expire in June 30 after which the lockout again was to continue until a new collective bargaining agreement was reached. The NBA later filed two claims against the National Basketball Players Association; one of these was the unfair labor practice charge before the NLRB and the second one was a lawsuit in New York Federal Court. After the NBA players met with the federal mediator in October 8, 2011, they then went ahead to reject the labor proposals and announce that the union was to disband and an antitrust lawsuit be filed against the NBA. The NBA then cancelled all the December games after which several NBA players filed antitrust lawsuit in at least two states. The NBA and the players’ union the later reached a tentative agreement which effectively ended the lockout. Then the NBA season was later scheduled to begin in December 25, 2011. The National Hockey League Collective Bargaining In their endeavors to effective bargaining, the NHL has had four work stoppages as of 1992 brought about by strike and 3 lockouts. The NHL players union and the owners have tried to bargain over these issues on behalf of the players to see an amicable solution arise. In 2004-2005, North America lost a whole season because of a labor dispute. In April 1992, the NHL players went on strike making the NHL to postpone 30 games. After that, due to a 103 day lockout, 468 games got canceled by October 1994. After the lockout, the collective bargaining agreement expired in 2004 calling for another lockout in September 2004. Hockey season of 2004-2005 was cancelled due to the lockout as bargaining went on to find a solution to the hockey problem. The talks that lasted 24 straight hours resulted in a tentative agreement that brought back the NHL players to work. By July 22, 2005, the lockout ended with the NHL Players Association signing a 6 years collective bargaining agreement. This deal included the players’ salary cap plus the solution to the main source of disagreement plus a limit on the total league’s limit spending for players. In June 2010, the NHL after another collective bargaining extended the existing collective bargaining through the 2011-2012 seasons. Another lockout was imposed by the NHL in September 2012 after the expiry of the previous collective bargaining agreement. This made the National Hockey League to cancel the 2012-2013 hockey regular season schedule by December 2012. This cancellation included a total of 526 scheduled hockey games from October through December. Another new tentative agreement was arrived at in January this year after a 16 hour negotiation. The same month, the National Hockey League owners voted unanimously in order to ratify a 10-year new collective bargaining agreement. In January, 2013, both the two parties; the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players Association signed a memorandum of understanding regarding their new 10 years collective bargaining agreement. This officially brought an end to the long ended lockout and brought to a start, the truncated regular season which began in January 19 and ended in April 27[CNN13]. Major League Baseball Collective Bargaining Due to the labor issues, the MLB has had a total of 8 work stoppages in its major history that were collectively brought about by 5 strikes and 3 lockouts. The longest work stoppage which is also the most recent is the 1994-1995 stoppage which occurred due to a strike. However, the work stoppages began in April 1972 with a strike which was due to the players’ pension and binding arbitration. This took 13 days where 86 games were missed. In February 1973, there was a lockout the binding arbitration for salary disputes which lasted 12 days though no games were missed. In March 1976, another lockout concerning free agency and re-entry draft occurred and this took 17 days though no games were missed. There was another strike that took place on April 1980, taking 8 days. This strike concerned free agent compensation and during the 8 day period, no games were missed. The court ordered another strike in June 1981 which lasted for 50 days leading to 712 games being missed. This was a strike concerning the team owners-free agent compensation. The next strike took place in August 1985, this was a strike concerning owner contributions to player pension plan and binding arbitration. This strike took two days and no games were missed during the period of bargaining. In February 1990, another lockout concerning the revenue sharing, salary arbitration and salary cap, took places lasting for 32 days, though no games were lost. Between 1994 and 1995 is when there was the longest strike experienced which was due to the players’ salary cap. This took 232 days and a total of 938 games were lost during the bargaining period. These included the entire 1994 playoffs and the World Series schedule. The MLB players and owners signed a new collective bargaining agreement in 2012 which included testing of the players’ blood for human growth hormones, expanding the playoffs from 8 as previous to 10 and moving the Houston Astros to the American League in this year, 2013. This collective bargaining agreement is scheduled to expire in December 2016. In conclusion, in American Professional sports, each and every particular sport has an association or union formed to bargain on the players’ behalf. There are major grievances that the parties try to solve including salary caps and work conditions. The collective bargaining has proved successful in settling the grievances in the professional sports in the US. References Cym99: , (Cym, 1999), Dan112: , (Daniel & Fabian, 2011), Bri12: , (Brittany, 2012), CNN13: , (CNN, 2013), Read More