Friday, March 11, 2011

League plans to lock out players, whose union decertified

NFL labor talks broke down Friday, just hours before the collective bargaining agreement was set to expire, as the union rejected a proposal from the league, then decertified, and 10 players, including MVP quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, sued the owners in federal court.
In response, the NFL planned to impose a lockout of players, starting at midnight ET, after the CBA officially expired, two team sources told NFL Network insider Michael Lombardi. No official announcement of a lockout was made.
The players went to court to request an injunction to block such a move by the league.
Despite two extensions to the collective bargaining agreement during 16 days of talks overseen by a federal mediator -- and previous months of stop-and-start bargaining -- the sides couldn't agree on a new labor deal.
"The parties have not achieved an overall agreement, nor have they been able to resolve the strongly held competing positions that separated them on core issues," mediator George Cohen said. "No useful purpose would be served by requesting the parties to continue the mediation process at this time."By dissolving and announcing it no longer represents the players in collective bargaining, the union became a trade association and cleared the way for class-action lawsuits against the NFL, which opted out of the labor deal in 2008. The antitrust suit -- officially known as Brady et al vs. National Football League et al -- attacked the league's policies on the draft, salary cap and free-agent restrictions such as franchise-player tags.Invoking the Sherman Act, an 1890 federal antitrust statute that limits monopolies and restrictions on commerce, the players are seeking triple the amount of damages they've incurred. That means the stakes could be in the hundreds of millions.It could take a month for there to be a ruling on the union's injunction request, and antitrust judgments should take longer.The CBA originally was due to expire last week, then was extended twice, in hopes that the sides could find common ground on the key issues: how to divide more than $9 billion in annual revenues, and how much financial information the league would be willing to reveal."I would dare any one of you to pull out any economic indicator that would suggest that the National Football League is falling on hard times," NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith said. "The last 14 days, the National Football League has said, 'Trust us.' But when it came time for verification, they told us it was none of our business."
It all sets the stage for a courtroom fight. The last time NFL games were lost to a work stoppage came when the players went on strike in 1987, leading to games with replacement players.
Even though the NFL is early in its offseason -- and the regular season is six months away -- this is hardly a complete down time. Free agency usually begins in March, and hundreds of potential free agents are now in limbo. Also this month, under a regular schedule, offseason workouts would start, and the owners meet to establish rules changes.Plus, March and early April are when many sponsors and corporate partners renew their deals with the NFL, part of why the league says hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue now will be lost.
"This obviously is a very disappointing day for all of us," New York Giants owner John Mara said. "I've been here for the better part of two weeks now, and essentially ... the union's position on the core economic issues has not changed one iota. One thing that became painfully apparent to me during this period was that their objective was to go the litigation route."The NFLPA also decertified in 1989. Antitrust lawsuits by players led to a 1993 CBA that included free agency, and the union formed again that year.
The sides met from 10 a.m. until about 4 p.m. ET Friday, discussing a new proposal by the league's owners. When the possibility of another CBA deadline extension was raised, Smith said the union first wanted assurances it would receive 10 years of audited financial information from the league.
"I will tell you this: Any business where two partners don't trust each other, any business where one party says, 'You need to do X, Y and Z because I told you,' is a business that is not only not run well, it is a business that can never be as successful as it can be," Smith said.At 4:45 p.m., Smith and the union's negotiators left. About 15 minutes later, the union decertified, saying it now becomes a professional trade association that supports the interests and rights of current and former players.
The players' union immediately shut down its websites -- NFLPA.org and NFLPlayers.com. A search for NFLPA.org yielded this message: "Error 404: Football Not Found. Please be patient as we work on resolving this. We are sorry for the inconvenience."
NFL general counsel Jeff Pash said the owners were on a conference call discussing the NFLPA's financial-records request when the union decided to decertify.
"No one is happy where we are now," Pash said. "I think we know where the commitment was. It was a commitment to litigate all along."A league statement added: "The union left a very good deal on the table."After Pash spoke, outside union lawyer Jim Quinn said: "I hate to say this, but he has not told the truth to our players or our fans. He has, in a word, lied to them about what happened today and what's happened over the last two weeks and the last two years."
Smith also strongly disagreed with Pash's assessment of the deal. Smith said the players were willing to give the league up to $1 billion in cash per year to fill revenue gaps in exchange for an equity position in an NFL team or any NFL property."And we were told by their lawyer a few months ago that his clients weren't, quote, interested," Smith said. "And when we made that same proposal today, we didn't even get a response."
The NFL said its offer included splitting the difference in the dispute over how much money the owners should be given off the top of the league's revenues. Under the expiring CBA, the owners immediately received about $1 billion before dividing the remainder of revenues with the players; the owners entered negotiations seeking to roughly double that by having an additional $1 billion up front.
But the owners eventually reduced that to about $650 million. Then, on Friday, they offered to drop that to approximately $325 million. Smith said the union offered during talks to give up $550 million over the first four years of a new agreement -- or an average of $137.5 million.
"We worked hard," said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who was joined at mediation Thursday and Friday by nine of the 10 members of the owners' labor committee. "We didn't reach an agreement, obviously. As you know, the union walked away from the mediation process."
Also in the NFL's offer, according to the league:

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