The NFL, The NFL Players' Union, The 2012 CBA And The Great Minnesota Union Raid

The portents for the NFL looked bright back in 2008 when the NFL was in the midst of planning a lockout of players to encourage major changes in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, commonly called the CBA.

Fan sentiment was either non-existent or slightly in favor of the owners' positions.

The CBA is due to expire in 2012, but the owners decided to force the issue during the 2011 season, starting with a rumored lockout of players if they do not sign the agreement quickly.

The population at that time was not particularly sensitive about millionaire players having to take a cut in pay. Sympathy for highly paid athletes was rare in an environment where the average middle class worker had his or her average household take home pay decreased by an average of $2,000 a year in one decade. And that figure was released before the Great Recession hit and unemployment skyrocketed.

Unions were not popular in any case and had shrunk to less than seven percent of American workers. Except for three major unions of government workers, the unions have almost no power left in America.

A players union consisting of people who earn twenty or thirty times the annual salary 99 percent of American workers did not seem to elicit public sympathy at all.

The NFL expected no major public outcry over asking these highly paid athletes to subject their bodies to another couple of games each season. Trading off two practice games for two full-out games that count seemed like, at the very least, a viable negotiating position to force players into taking a major pay cut and to allow a rookie pay scale that eliminates the million dollar first year salaries for unproven players.

The NFL owners felt they were in the driver seat and the players would have no option except going along with what they were asking. And the polls showed that they were, in fact, in a strong position. Americans were, in general, not worried too much about the whole issue. Before falling to sleep, it is reasonable that wired owners counted dollar signs instead of counting sheep.

But then a political issue arose over the past three weeks that has radically altered the NFL labor universe. Governor Scott Walker of Minnesota introduced a law that would outlaw unions representing government workers from collective bargaining, period.

The bill would give the government of Minnesota the right to change worker's salaries, benefits or working conditions at any time they so choose. It almost slid by without much comment, but as often happens in politics, the blow back built slowly, but steadily.

By the time of this writing the opposition to the bill is so strong that it is the major issue in politics in America. News broadcasts lead with the Minnesota story or provides major time to film showing the masses of people demonstrating at the Minnesota Legislature and other the cities in the state.

Massive demonstrations rivaling those of the 1970's supporting the unions' position have sprung up in many states and cities, and suddenly an issue of union bargaining rights is front and center. The popularity of unions rose in a few short weeks from "what is a union?" to "they can't do that to us."

Sixty one percent of Americans now poll for collective bargaining and against the proposed law. Polls show that is a rising trend. Just as suddenly, the players’ prospects in negotiating the CBA has gone from grim to rosy.

With the momentum of the Minnesota argument behind them, the players union now has the wind at their backs, instead of in their faces. They can now appeal to the fans to support them in their quest to renew the CBA and to resist the more unpleasant of the owners' requests.

We have, of course, no crystal ball to predict the outcome, but the issue of labor relations with the NFL and the players union has gone from ho hum to, well, interesting!

We, the fans, now have something to entertain us besides droll and boring draft weekends.

Stay tuned for further developments.