NFL and NFLPA executives meet for fourth straight day of labour negotiations
George Cohen should be called the executive whisperer. Cohen wrote the book on collective bargaining and so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that with him acting as the mediator, the National Football League (NFL) and the Players Association (NFLPA) are finally
at the negotiating table, and might actually get something done.
The NFL and the NFLPA met for the fourth consecutive day of negotiations and things appear to be going somewhat smoothly.
Last week the two sides agreed to seek the help of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) to resolve the labour dispute. The two sides have struggled to come together and negotiate. No formal bargaining sessions were held between November
and February. The parties met in Dallas on the eve of the Super Bowl and met again a week later, before the talks broke down. The league walked out on those negotiations after just two hours of deliberation. Meetings scheduled for the next day were also called
off by the NFL.
Cohen has somehow managed to keep the two sides at the table for four straight days and all the signs are positive. Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback, Charlie Batch is a member of the NFLPA’s executive committee and attended the meetings. While he didn’t
give any details about the discussions, he did say that things were going well.
Cohen has asked the league and the union to observe a strict media blackout. In four days of negotiations, not a single detail about the subjects being discussed or the issues being resolved has been given to the media. The very fact that the negotiations
are still going on is reason enough to be optimistic. On Sunday, the negotiations in Washington began at 9 am and concluded at 6 pm. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the Players Association executive director, DeMaurice Smith, both arrived at around 10 am
and engaged in almost eight hours of negotiations.
On Monday the energy didn’t fizzle away. NFL and NFLPA executives left together at about 6 pm after nearly seven hours of negotiations. Neither side offered any comment on the status of the negotiations. Instead of answering questions about the labour dispute,
Smith talked about the cold weather and the forecast of more snow. The media blackout is still holding up.
Since Friday, the league and union officials have met for at least 25 hours at the offices of the FMCS in Washington.
The negotiations appeared to have all but broken down just a week ago when the NFL filed a complaint with the National Labour Relations Board against the Players Association. The complaint alleged that the union engaged in surface bargaining and was failing
to fulfill its obligations according to the collective bargaining agreement. The league further accused the union of using the threat of decertification and a subsequent barrage of anti-trust lawsuits to intimidate the league into succumbing to its demands.
With Cohen on board, that distrust appears to have faded to an extent. “Any time you talk,” Charlie Batch said, “you have to feel better.” That is certainly true for these two sides, which have dragged each other to courts more often than the negotiating
table in the past couple of months.
While neither side will publicly comment, the subject of the negotiations most likely is revenue sharing. The players and owners split revenue almost 50-50 according to the collective bargaining agreement signed in 2006. All operational costs are extracted
from the owners share and the players keep their cut to themselves. NFL owners have said that they got a raw deal in 2006 and football cannot continue under the current financial agreement.
Once the financial issues are ironed out, the two sides will also discuss an 18-game regular season. The league wants to cut short the pre-season by two games and add two games to the regular season instead. The players are unanimously opposed to idea.
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