Bergeaux's list of things - Week 11
Decertification means that the owners won't be able to lock the players out, which means that we WILL have football in 2011. The draft happens with or without a lockout and with or without a players' union. The Union decertified back in the 90s, and things went on OK.
Regardless of what happens, there will be NO scab players.
You really don't understand the labor situation at all, do you?
Hence the category, things I know I don't know.
Exactly.
Here's what concerns me and what I don't know. If there is no contract and the players decertify, how do the owners have a draft without breaking labor laws? If you were coming out of college as an accountant and accounting firms tried to have a draft that determined where you were able to go work and that's the only company you were able to negotiate with, how would that be legal? It wouldn't. The only reason the NFL can do that is because they had a contract with the players union and the 32 NFL teams.
Without that union and the contract, the draft is illegal. The only answer is to not have a draft at all. I don't understand how this will work (again hence the "things I know I don't know") and it seems to me to be really dicey. Maybe, I'm wrong, but what the decertification does is shut down the NFL completely with no scab players, no games, nothing, unless the players are allowed to negotiate with the teams like the wild wild west with no restrictions. That said, I don't see how the owners will be forced to go through with the 2011 season. They are businesses and they can just suspend operations for a specific time period like any other company can. (again maybe I'm wrong)
The owners have prepared for this possibility financially, the players have not. Which is why they are trying to pull out the "nuclear option" of decertification.
I admit, I don't really know for sure how all this works, but I don't think many on this forum do either. If anyone can explain how the NFL can have a draft and any sort of order to player movement without a union, I'd love to hear it. Also if anyone can explain how decertification forces the teams to play games, I'd love to hear that explanation. I'm not saying I know, I'm saying that logic tells me otherwise. Maybe I just don't know the rules/contracts well enough.