LATROBE, Pa. (AP) -Charlie Batch wonders if NFL players realize they could lose their family’s health insurance next spring, plus their 401(k) retirement plan matches and nearly every other league-provided benefit.
If the NFL labor agreement expires in March without a new deal in place, player salaries for 2010 won’t be capped, but there won’t be a minimum, either. Sure, a quarterback might get $10 million, but the punter signed at midseason theoretically could be told it’s a take-it-or-leave-it $100,000, about one-third the current minimum.
The year after that? Batch only hopes there is the usual, uninterrupted 16-game season and no labor strife in 2011. Right now, he’s not so sure.
“I’m not optimistic,” Batch said Tuesday. “And I don’t think a lot of people should be.”
Asked to guess the odds of an owners’ lockout, Batch said, “100 percent.”
labor peace for so long – 22 years without a work stoppage, 27 years since a lengthy shutdown without games – that Batch wonders if complacency has set in among players. He expects the most contentious labor talks since a 1982 impasse halted play for two months, and he hopes players are prepared for it.
That’s why, speaking at the league’s annual rookie symposium this summer, Batch advised players to have their finances in place for the next 24 months. Watch their money, watch who’s watching it and watch what’s going on with the labor talks.
“Nobody wants to get to that point (where the 2011 season is threatened), and you hope a deal can be struck before then, but no serious talks have begun,” said Batch, the Steelers’ player representative and an NFL player since 1998. “So how can you be optimistic and say it’s going to get done?”
The last labor agreement was reached in 2006, when the owners increased the players’ shares of the league’s estimated $8 billion a year in revenue to 60 percent, up from 57 percent. With the salary cap increasing by at least $5 million per season, and sometimes much more, the owners say that’s too much. The players are guessing the owners will seek a rollback.
rman, an NHL labor lawyer during the 2004-05 shutdown that resulted in players under contract taking a 24 percent pay cut and accepting a salary cap.
With owners likely seeking major changes, new NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith is urging players to begin campaigning – now. He wants them mentioning that as many as 100,000 stadium employees might lose their jobs, at least temporarily, during a shutdown and that many stadiums were built largely at taxpayers’ expense.
“Everybody is trying to get to the point where we don’t get to the worst possible situation,” Batch said. “I think that’s why everybody is trying to bring everything to the forefront right now.”
The labor talks are the first in a quarter-century without former NFLPA chief Gene Upshaw, who died last year. His close relationship with Steelers owner Dan Rooney led to the union accepting a salary cap in 1994 and helped ensure that no games have been lost since 1987. Major league baseball, the NHL and NBA, by contrast, have had shutdowns since then.
Rooney effectively retired from football after becoming the U.S. ambassador to Ireland this year, but he remains the Steelers’ owner. Batch believes he will become involved in the labor talks if needed.
insight if need be. I think he’ll be somewhere around it, the ghost of the negotiations.”
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