NFL Lockout: The Feds Have the Power in Labor Negotiations

Players Union Seeking Transparency in Labor Negotiations

The NFL owners are unwilling to open up their books to the players union.

The current chip under negotiation is an $800 million one that the owners want off the top of league revenue, without giving the NFLPA their cut.  That number is down from the previously requested $1 billion.

All the players are asking for in return is total transparency.  When there’s transparency, both groups can determine what is fair.  The NFL team owners, however, would rather operate in secrecy.

This aura of secrecy is an ominous one, as it usually comes down to the fans footing the bill for the higher profits of owners and players alike.  It’s truly trickle-up economics.

When it comes down to it, both sides need to agree to less money and pass the savings on down to the consumer.

Seriously, $89 for a jersey that costs teams 25 cents to make and ship over here from one of many countries?  The fans need a union themselves, demanding a cap on commercial time, a cap on ticket prices, and a cap on merchandise.

Who is protecting the fan from these corporate raiders?  It seems, in a tough economic time, that prices and profits are going up and yet, still, the richest among us meet together and plot against the public.

The NFL owners operate on lies and deceit.  Look no further than the extra commercials fans have to sit through only in recent years as the late Sunday games have all been pushed back 15 minutes to make room on the schedule.

The NFL claims they have so many commercials so the players can have rests because the sport’s so brutal on their bodies.  That’s what they’d want you to believe.  They’re dirty little secret is they just want more money, and that the face they show the public as well as the words they use are all lies.

All the players are asking for is transparency so they can make an informed decision on whether or not the teams truly are in need of this nearly billion-dollar concession.

Basically the Union is calling the NFL’s bluff.

Then the NFL comes back with, well that information isn’t important.  So then give it to them!!!

If the NFL’s response is, we don’t see how that would help you, then what is the harm in turning it over?

The truth.  The truth is actually the biggest harm in the owners’ eyes.

The NFL doesn’t want the truth to come out because if it does they know that their request for $800 million off the top of their already hefty $9 billion per annum is baseless.

The Union is willing to give the owners a huge chunk of change (a total of $4 billion over five years) if it is shown that the teams themselves are in need of the money.

All the Players Union is asking for is the proper information necessary to do their jobs as negotiators.

Still, the recent $4 billion judgment hasn’t put an end to the squabbling, and at this point, the government would be well to put price caps on everything from salaries to ticket prices.

The government should act on behalf of its citizens by protecting our prices so that we too can gain from this venture.

Without that action, the NFL owners will surely find a way to get this season on the road and more boatloads of our money into their pockets.

With that option, however, players will have to play for less, while the top players in the game gets compensated by the advertisers.  Citizens have more money in their pockets from the price caps so they go out and spend their money with the advertisers.  The owners gain by increasing commercial time slot prices that’s paid by the advertisers.

Everybody wins! 

It’s a circular economy that flows because the money starts at the bottom with the fans.  It’s by putting the money in the hands of the small that you build up a society as a whole.

Federally mandated price caps are the wise solution to a healthy economy for all.

Take the image of Water:

If it trickles down it causes what?  Decay.

It water trickles up, it is able to build.

The money should trickle up to raise the elite like a mountain raises its peak—not put in the hands of greed mongers who horde it over us and use it to pull our strings for more and more money and power. 

The people through the power of the government should slay the beast that has been born out of the greed of the NFL.  Let the NFL, "ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."  Let us as a people, by the words of JFK, bring the NFL down to serve the people of the country and not the other way around.

The sooner government takes wide-sweeping action in favor of its citizens, the sooner we can get this game on again.  The longer we wait to act, the specter of NFL lockout remains for this year and years to come.