Disappointment after NFL and NFLPA failed to agree on new labor deal - Part 2
This is the second part of a three part series of articles discussing what happened at the meetings between the NFL and NFLPA and what the league plans to do next to try and reach a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
He believes that eventually the two sides will be back at the table but, unfortunately, they now have to take the process to court.
Jeff Pash, NFL executive vice president of labor and part of the league counsel, also addressed the media on Friday. He had been at the meetings for most of the past three weeks, fully engaged and committed to this process. Pash had said the day before that
an agreement could be reached if there was commitment on both sides.
He, like the rest of the league, was disappointed that at the very time that the league was face-to-face with the union and its executives committee, they had already made the decision to decertify from the union. Pash and the league were meeting with the
union after 4:00 PM ET on Friday afternoon to talk about the offer that they tendered them. An hour later, the league received letters that said that as of 4:00 PM ET, the union had given up their status as a representative. The league believes that they know
where the commitment was.
They say that it was a commitment to litigate, as they have been saying from the beginning. That is unfortunate because all it means is that the eventual resolution of this business dispute is going to be delayed. Pash believes that they will reach an agreement
and will have a system that is good for fans, good for players and allows this game to grow.
Pash also thanked the mediators, saying that they had put in an extraordinary amount of time and effort to bring discipline and strength to the process. They pushed both sides to examine and re-examine the positions. Out of that came a comprehensive, new
and revised proposal to the NFLPA that incorporated and moved further in all of the areas that the two sides had discussed over the past few weeks where progress had been made.
The league had incorporated new economic terms to try and bridge the gap, which is rumoured to be around $800 million. Pash claims that it is nowhere close to factual. The league offered today to split the difference and meet the union in the middle with
a player compensation number that would have been equivalent to player compensation in 2009 and above player compensation in 2010. The league then offered to grow it from there over four years by $20 million per club to the point where, in 2014, the player
compensation number was the number that the union asked for.
The views stated in this and the previous article are the opinions and views of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, New York Giants owner John Mara and NFL Executive Vice President of Labor Jeff Pash. The
views have been conveyed through the understanding of the writer based on comments made at a press conference on Friday 11 March, 2011 in Washington, D.C. The views do not represent Bettor.com’s official editorial policy in any way.
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