Greetings from suburban Chicago.\u00a0 I’m here for a week visiting the family.<\/p>\n
The timing of when I exercise my generous allotment of vacation is set late in the previous calendar year through a bidding system at the job.\u00a0 When I chose this particular week, it was my intention to attend the Ryder Cup golf tournament with my brother Chris.\u00a0 I’ve always wanted to attend a Ryder Cup and the fact that it’s at Medinah here this year made it a logical place to see it.<\/p>\n
Turns out we both failed in the lottery for tickets and offerings on the resale market are out of our price range, so we’ll probably just watch it on TV.<\/p>\n
We’ll hit a high school football game on Friday night and then take a ride up to Evanston on Saturday morning to see Northwestern open its Big Ten slate.<\/p>\n
Chris’s television is wired to a dish that allows him to get all the NFL games on Sunday afternoons, so there will be some of that to enjoy too.\u00a0 I’d expect the league’s locked-out game officials back on the field this weekend or next.\u00a0 The Golden Tate TD moves the union into a position of serious leverage.\u00a0 Stalled negotiations on a new deal resumed hours after the blown call.\u00a0 The amount of money at stake on an annual basis if the league caves completely on all bargaining points is peanuts relative to the total revenue pie.\u00a0 That’s what has made this lockout such a waste and failure.\u00a0 The stubborn NFL owners who gave commissioner Roger Goodell marching orders on how to approach a new deal with the union blew this situation horribly.\u00a0 The relative lack of controversy after week 1 appeared to embolden the owners but it’s all come crashing down.\u00a0 The mighty National Football League – the greatest of all professional sports leagues – has unnecessarily inflicted damage on its product.<\/p>\n
I’d imagine the league’s television partners will have some input on this.\u00a0 Game mismanagement by the replacement refs has added significant length to the duration of many 1 PM contests and that throws a wrench in the network’s ability to roll ads sold for play during the important four o’clock window.<\/p>\n
There’s one associated issue I’d like to comment on – and that’s usage of the word “scabs” when describing the men officiating NFL games in the absence of those locked out by the league.\u00a0 I personally think “scab” is a strong word with a powerful negative meaning.\u00a0 I would never, ever allow myself to be in a situation where I’d be referred to as a “scab.”<\/p>\n
But the guys working these games are scabs.<\/p>\n
I’ve heard some say that the replacement officials aren’t technically scabs because they don’t cross picket lines to perform the work.\u00a0 My definition of scab is a bit different.\u00a0 Workers who enable employers to gain leverage or an otherwise unavailable advantage in a labor dispute with union employees are scabs.\u00a0 There’s no picket line from the union in this instance because the players wouldn’t dare cross it.\u00a0 The union refs believe they can win a new deal without shutting the league down and soon they will.<\/p>\n
That’s not to say I don’t understand the motivation of the replacement refs.\u00a0 The replacements are getting an unexpected shot at practicing their craft at the highest level of competition.\u00a0 They’re suddenly on the game’s biggest stage without getting there based on merit, experience or breaks.\u00a0 They know they’re scabs and they rationalize it however they can.\u00a0 In the long history of labor disputes in this country however, scabs inevitably reveal their relative lack of experience and know-how. resulting in lower quality of output.<\/p>\n
Strikes or lockouts almost always become public relations battles that obscure the substantive and legitimate areas of disagreement.<\/p>\n
An example of what scabs are not<\/strong> came two weeks ago here in Chicago.\u00a0 When public school teachers went on strike and manned picket lines at schools across the city, union janitors showed up for work.\u00a0 So did non-union employees who were asked to staff cafeterias serving free breakfasts and lunches desperately important to poor kids.\u00a0 These people are not scabs.\u00a0 Yes, they crossed lines to do these tasks.\u00a0 But union teachers already had much of the leverage they needed thanks to significant negative public opinion about the mayor’s bullying imposition of new terms of employment.\u00a0 The teachers didn’t need union janitors to stay home to voice objection to Rahm’s ram job.\u00a0 Continuation of the lunch\/breakfast program didn’t detract or distract from the core issues in dispute.<\/p>\n Organized labor has been whittled down to near-nothing in the private sector in large part due to efforts not unlike what the NFL is engaged in.\u00a0 The league’s playbook is the same as the one used by airlines, coal companies, manufacturers and steel corporations.\u00a0 NFL owners believe they can get their way by outlasting the union.<\/p>\n What’s different about this battle is that the performance of the scabs is on television every week.\u00a0 Those watching it expect a certain level of fair play.\u00a0 They’re not getting it.\u00a0 It’s a great lesson in labor-management relations.<\/p>\n When one of the country’s most vociferous opponents of unionism (Wisconsin governor Scott Walker) voiced support for the return of the NFL’s union officials because his state’s beloved Packers got screwed by scabs, labor could only laugh.\u00a0 It was an acknowledgment by the staunchest scab of all that the pawns put out there to help the league stave off pay and benefit advancement for regular officials isn’t working.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greetings from suburban Chicago.\u00a0 I’m here for a week visiting the family. The timing of when I exercise my generous allotment of vacation is set late in the previous calendar year through a bidding system at the job.\u00a0 When I … Continue reading