Although I’m not a sports fan, I’m always disappointed in the union leadership during professional athletes’ labor disputes. The current dispute between Major League Baseball and the players’ union (a lockout that began Thursday, Dec. 2) is just the latest one where it looks like labor isn’t learning from previous problems in public relations.
For the benefit of those unfamiliar with how labor law works in the United States, most private-sector workers fall under the National Labor Relations Act. (The main exception is those who fall under the Railway Labor Act, which covers both railroad and airline employees.) For workers who are covered by the NLRA, when a union contract reaches its end, employees usually continue to work under the terms of the expired agreement. That’s what happens by default unless the union decides to strike or management decides to impose a lockout. In a lockout, the workers are willing to keep going like before, but management refuses to let them. That’s what’s happening in Major League Baseball right now.
It’s possible that this will be resolved before spring training, in which case few people will pay attention. Or it could be that it will drag on for months after the regular season is scheduled to start. There hasn’t been a strike or lockout in Major League Baseball in a long time; the most recent was a 232-day strike that ran from Aug. 12, 1994, to March 31, 1995. But since then, there have been a variety of lockouts in the other three major pro sports in the United States (basketball, football and hockey).
No matter what sport it is, and regardless of whether the work stoppage is a strike or a lockout, the owners try to portray the players as a bunch of greedy prima donnas getting millions of dollars to play a children’s game. That’s not fair, of course, because most pro athletes aren’t making the big money that the stars get. But it’s the public perception. If union leaders want to gain the upper hand in public sentiment, they need to do something to counter this perception.
The smart thing to do would be to partner with some nonprofit, such as the United Way, rent out stadiums and play the same schedule they’d normally play. Sure, in most cases, they won’t be able to play in the stadiums they normally use, but every city big enough to have a big-league sports team has some other venue somewhere in the metropolitan area. They might have to play at some university, or even have their home games split among multiple venues, but it could be done. It would be weird to have big-league players in a 5,000-seat venue, but there’s no reason it can’t happen.
It could work by having the United Way (or whatever partner) rent the stadiums and charge admission. The charity partner would pay umpires (or referees if the dispute is in another sport). The charity partner would keep whatever was made after expenses. The players would donate their labor.
The players wouldn’t be able to call themselves the Phillies, Dodgers, Nationals, etc., since those names are trademarked. But nothing’s stopping them from calling themselves Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Washington, etc.
The smart thing would be for union leaders to reach out as soon as possible to charity partners. The owners would realize very quickly that if the players are donating their labor to charity, they won’t be able to portray players as greedy. The owners would surely do whatever they need to do to get the dispute settled by spring training to avoid the embarrassment of players saying, “We’d love to get things back to normal, but until the owners stop being greedy, we’ll just play for free and make money for charity.”
If labor leaders were to do this, they’d gain the upper hand in public support. Just making preparations for this would surely get management to be a lot more flexible.