Labor Union Disputes Nba Lockout free essay sample

I do know about basketball but this labor dispute had really nothing to do with basketball the game but everything to do with basketball the business. I had never thought of the NBA as a business before. Picking this dispute gave me a chance to dive into information and research on how the business side of things went. I also knew I would learn many new things as this term went on. The NBA lockout began on July 1st, 2011 between the NBPA and NBA regarding the CBA. The NBPA union represents the players in the NBA. It was founded in 1954 making it the oldest of the four major United States sports leagues to have a union. Unfortunately, they were not recognized by NBA team owners until 1964. The NBA was found in New York City on June 6th, 1946 and was called the Basketball Association of America. They changed the name to Nation Basketball Association on August 3rd, 1949 after merging with their rival National Basketball League. The BAA was founded by the owners of the major ice hockey arenas in the NE and Midwestern United States and Canada. The NBA recognizes the first official game to have been played on November 1st, 1946 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The NBA started with 11 teams and now currently has 30 teams all together. 29 of those teams are within the United States and 1 team is in Canada. Bob Cousy was the player who started the NBPA by writing a letter to each of the leagues teams. All but one responded positively. After receiving the letters back Cousy went to the NBA president in the beginning of 1955 with the players’ concerns. The players wanted payment of back salaries to the members of the defunct Baltimore Bullets club, a twenty game limit on exhibition games and players should get share of the profits, eliminate the â€Å"whispering† fee, payment for promoting NBA, a board to settle player and owner disputes, moving expenses paid for traded players, as well as their payments being ten instead of twelve installments to provide more to the players who get cut. NBA president agreed to pay six Baltimore players a two week back salary but then put Cousy and the players off for another two years. In 1957 Cousy went to AFL-CIO to file for a union. The NBA then agreed to â€Å"bargain in good faith† with the players union fallowing the season. The NBPA received the basic terms of their initial offer. NBPA has many important purposes. They negotiate the terms of a CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement) with the NBA who control the players’ employment and to make sure the NBA and teams meet their rules and regulations under the CBA. Also to monitor, discuss and insure the players have insurance benefits and retirement options as well as educating and certifying the players’ agents. It is said that at one point a player will call the NBPA for help at least once in his career whether it be about the above points or to get legal advice, negotiation on the contract, to resolve a dispute protect medical benefits and other rights or to file a grievance. As you can see there is a need for the NBPA and they do everything they can to help out the NBA players be seen as people instead of property. The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) is the contract between the NBA, made up of the commissioner and 30 team owners, and the NBPA. The contract covers the rules for player’s contracts, trades, revenue distribution, NBA draft as well as the salary cap. The NBA and NBPA have had trouble in the past. In 1995 there was a labor dispute when the NBA owners imposed a lockout but no games were lost. The first actual lockout that caused the players to lose games happened in 1998-1999 season and lasted 200 days and each of the teams playing only 50 regular season games instead of the normal 82. The CBA expired in the 2010-2011 season, which then lead to the 2011 lockout. When unionizing a workplace both sides, management and employees, each have their own views on the employment relationship to have equal efficiency, equity and voice. Business strategies for management stated in the book is broken down into two general types, one being cost leadership and the other differentiation. Cost leadership emphasizes on low cost which means to have the lowest possible labor costs. Differentiation strategy is an emphasis on features without losing quality. David Stern started as an outside counsel to the NBA in 1966. After 12 years in 1978 he joined the NBA as the general counsel and soon became the executive vice president in 1980. In 1984 he became the commissioner of the NBA and is credited with spiking the popularity of the NBA in the 1990’s and 2000’s. During a regular season each team will play 82 games. 41 of those games will be home and the other 41 away games. Over 5 seasons each team will have played 80 games against their own division, 180 games against the rest of their conference, and 150 games against other conference. On the 16th Thursday of the season is the deadline for being allowed to exchange players with other teams for the remainder of the season however they may still sign and release players still. The regular season ends around the middle of April and they begin voting for individual awards. Then shortly after the NBA playoff start. So far there have been two other lockouts in the NBA. The first one started July 1st 1995 and ended September 12th 1995. This lockout happened in the off season so luckily no games were lost. The second one was during the 1998-1999 season. The season didn’t start until February 5th 1999 which resulted in 464 games being lost for the season. This lockout lasted 200 days and ended up having the 29 NBA teams playing a 50 game schedule for the season. The inability to bargain was a major reason for the 2011 NBA lockout. NBPA accused the league of negotiating in â€Å"bad faith†. Their reasoning for accusing them was because they believed the league was failing to provide critical financial data to the union and continued to threaten to lock out the players. The term â€Å"in bad faith† is a grey area. It’s hard to draw the line between good faith and bad faith, as every perception is different. Four major examples of bad faith bargaining would be, making unilateral changes, direct dealing, refusing to provide information and surface bargaining. Unilateral changes is when an employer changes things such as wages, benefits or other terms and conditions of employment without bargaining first with the union. Direct dealing is when the employer tries to undermine a union by interacting directly with the employees with respect to bargaining issues. Refusing to provide information explains itself, but the information would pertain to something such as job evaluation data, standards for merit raises, and health and safety statistics. The last major example is surface bargaining, which is when an employer or union goes through the motions of bargaining but does not sincerely try to reach an agreement. Since the NBA and NBPA had such a difficult time bargaining with each other there were many â€Å"work days† lost. These work days or game days affected more than just the owners and the players. It affected the people working inside the arena’s where the games would take place, ticket sellers, merchandizing, as well as fans. An estimated 400 NBA jobs were lost due to the layoffs from the lockout. 200 of the jobs lost were within the league office and another 200 among the 30 teams. Because the lockout dragged on toward holiday season, the workers felt the impact. The people who lost their jobs had to go find part-time work in order to make up for their loss of income. For canceling just the NBA preseason the league lost over $200 million. They lost a total of 100 games from the lockout. The league lost between $6 and $10 million for every game. Each month of the lockout the players lost $350 million. The average player lost $220,000 after the first missed paycheck on November 15th, 2011. The NBA did compensate the players $100,000 for their salaries falling below the 57% BRI level in 2010-2011. Bargaining is a key term in any company setting. However, in a union it is the biggest component. It can help or hurt a union and or company extremely. In the NBA lockout the biggest reason for bargaining was the wages. The NBA wanted to cut the salary so much that the union was not okay with it and would not agree. The consequence for not being able to agree on a new CBA cost them even more money. The players were willing to cut their salary but not as much as the NBA was wanting to. Before the NBA lockout happened on July 1st, 2011 there were negotiations being made on a new CBA. The league claimed it was losing $300 million dollars a year and wanted to cut players salary by 40% and institute a hard salary cap. A hard salary cap is a limit on total amount of money that the NBA teams are allowed to pay their players. It is subject to a confusing system of rules and what would be exceptions. Obviously the union challenged those numbers and protested the changes. In May of 2011 the NBPA filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board stating that the league was negotiating in bad faith but failing to provide the union with important financial data and threatening to lock out players. After that the NBA quickly came back saying that they fully comply with the federal labor laws. The union also considered to file an antitrust lawsuit against the NBA. An antitrust lawsuit is when employees represented by a union can petition to decertify the union. They must provide evidence that at least 30% of the union supports the decertification and are bound by the same contract rules as an outside union would be. Decertification elections are subject to the same rules concerning improper campaign conduct as elections initiated by a union. August 1st, 2011 the first bargaining session began but quickly ended three hours later since neither side could negotiate effectively. On August 2, 2011 the NBA filed two unfair labor practice claims against the NBPA accusing the players of not being cooperative in negotiations and making threats to dissolve the union and file antitrust lawsuits. It was said on August 4th by the players union director, Billy Hunter thought that the entire 2011-2012 season would most likely be canceled. The NBPA and the NBA owners sat down again on August 31st, 2011 to negotiate a second time around. Nothing specific were disclosed however both sides were hoping to meet again soon. On September 13th the union and owners met for more negotiating but the meeting ended very soon. The NBA canceled training camp on September 23rd when the camp was supposed to start October 3rd. Another meeting was then planned for September 30th. This meeting too failed. Shortly after on October 4th the NBA canceled the remainder of the preseason which in turn would make them lose $200 million. Following the cancelation the NBA and NBPA met again 6 more times, all of which ended with no agreement the last of those six meetings was on October 20th. After all of these attempts to come up with a new CBA the players said the NBA was negotiating in â€Å"bad faith† and on November 14th they dissolved the union and turned into a trade association. This allowed the players to be represented by lawyers in a class action lawsuit against the NBA. On November 15th a group of NBA players who included Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Kawhi Leonard and Leon Powe filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NBA in a California federal court. In a Minnesota federal court some more players of the NBA such as Anthony Tolliver, Ben Gordon, Caron Butler and Derrick Williams filed their own suit against the NBA. November 15 would have been the day the players were to receive their first paychecks if the season was played like originally planned. The California lawsuit was dropped on November 21st 2011 in order to merge with the Minnesota lawsuit. David Boies was hopping that this would help speed up the process since the courts would most likely merge the suits anyway since they are similar complaints seeking the same outcome. After this the league had until December 5th to respond in court. However it never got to that point because the NBPA was re-formed as a union on December 1st and the new CBA was wrote up on December 8th 2011. If the NBA did not consist of a union I don’t believe the outlook would change much for the 2011 lockout. Since our society is so wrapped up in media this event would always make headlines whether the players were in a union or not. Obviously the lockout probably wouldn’t have happened since there would be no CBA to agree upon again. However I do think that the players would fight back against the NBA regardless. The reason why I do think that they would fight back is because when the NBPA dissolved the union they did so in order to file an antitrust lawsuit. This means that even though they were no longer a union they were still willing to take a stand in their rights as human beings. Union or nonunion this dispute would still appear in headlines, it would just be under different circumstances. The lockout is currently an employee/employer relationship. If you take this dispute as a whole you can generalize that the reason for the lockout was because management and employees did not agree with each other. This does happen quite often in many companies, unions or not. If the company is not a union the employees do have less of a say what is happening, however, they can and should still stand up for what they think is fair and right in an given situation. Disagreeing is common among everyday life. Not every person agrees completely with one another on every subject. You are bound to have disputes in the workplace about a number of things. These disputes can be as small as if a coffee pot or refrigerator being put in a break room and can be as big as how much employees are getting paid or how much their pay may be getting cut. As you do see these conflicts do happen and often and it is normal for companies to have frequent disputes. It’s hard to say what would happen if this dispute happened in the future and if the labor relations and practices were changed. There are a lot of ifs in that and those rely on a number of things to be changed or that could change. If somehow a law was passed that unions would no longer be able to exist that would change this dispute a lot legally. If that were the case there would be no CBA contract to renew and no compromises to be made. The players still could take a stand if they wanted but they would not be protected or have the right to be heard by the owners of the NBA. Even if a drastic change such as outlawing unions happened I do think that the players would fight back. They would somehow find a way to fight against the NBA for completing to trying to complete such huge changes that would affect their careers. The final conclusion between the NBA and the NBPA was not just as simple as how much the players were getting paid; it went far deeper than that. It’s hard for me to draw up my own resolution when what they agreed upon was fair in my mind, considering where both sides stood. Each side did have people who vocally said to the media that they did not agree with or want the changes that were made in the new CBA. The length of the agreement was changed as well as 17 other topics. These other 17 topics included, revenue split, escrow, amnesty provision, revenue sharing, minimum team salary, luxury tax, distribution of luxury-tax funds, additional limits for taxpaying teams, stretch provision, free agents and restricted free agency, new contracts, contract extensions, midlevel exception, disabled player exception, trade rules, base year compensation, as well as re-signing a traded player were changed. This CBA was a tentative agreement or a â€Å"trial† agreement between both sides. In my perspective they wrote this rough draft up on the basics on what they could agree upon so they could in turn start the season. The lockout was more than just a simple union dispute. It was a complete change in the entire scheme of how each side worked with each other to compromise enough to sustain one another. In other words this CBA that was wrote was in comparison like writing and entire new employee/employer handbook as well as changing key factors in almost every aspect of their professional relationship. The spectrum of changes was so broad that the compromises made to start the season were only the surface issues. There were many under lying issues that needed to be addressed in the CBA over a certain amount of time but the 18 things that I mentioned are the framework for this. With the amount of things that were changed it is be incredibly difficult to come up with my own overall resolution. To me the one topic that stood out the most due to the drastic change was how they changed the disabled player exception. In the last CBA (2005) it stated that if a player was injured and could not play the team was allowed to find a replacement, offering them a 5 year contract with their salary being the lower half of the player they were replacing with an 8% increase every year for the 5 years. Now on the 2011 CBA this was dramatically changed to a single year contract for the replacement of the injured player but keeping the same salary basis as the 2005 CBA with no increase due to the 1 year contract. The previous CBA benefited the team and the new CBA benefits the injured player based on the fact that if a player was injured during the length of the 2005 CBA they were in fear of being benched because if their replacement did well during their recovery time the injured player could have their spot taken from them and not play. I would change this for the replacement player’s benefit by changing the agreement to a two year contract allowing the replacement player the oppurtunity to prove himself beneficial to the team rather than being just a replacement for the injured player. This would help unsigned or free agent players the ability to earn a permanent contract with a given team. I believe a single season performance is not a fair amount of time for a player to adapt to a new environment and shine though enough to acquire a full contract with that given team. Two years is a fair amount of time for the players of the team, the coaches and the replacement player to find team coordination. It is also enough time for the replacement player to prove himself as an asset to the team. As a whole the lockout to me was much more than a single disagreement. It was about the entire scheme of how the business was run on both the NBA and NBPA sides. This issue was a very public and complex dispute. Also what makes this event hard to analyze is with the time frame in which they had to come up with an agreement with so many issues in order to not loose even more money, not to mention the effect on the fans, towns, stadium and concessions employees and the possible damage to the entire nation’s economy. Such an intricate dispute as this one where almost every aspect of the CBA was changed should not have been expected to be resolved easily. Bibliography: Budd, John W. Labor Relations: Striking a Balance. 3rd Edition. New York: Ducham, 2010. Print. Beck, Howard. â€Å"N. B. A. Season in Peril as Players Reject Offer. † The New York Times. The New York Times. 14 November 2011. Web. 21 March 2012 Aschburner, Steve. â€Å"NBA lockout timeline. † NBA. NBA. 9 December 2011. Web. 21 March 2012. Aschburner, Steve. â€Å"NBA heads into lockout after sides can’t get deal done. † NBA. NBA. 1 July 2011. Web. 21 March 2012. Beck, Howard. â€Å"N. B. A. Reaches a Tentative Deal to Save the Season. † The New York Times. The New York Times. 6 November 2011. Web. 21 March 2012. â€Å"National Basketball Players Association. † Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. â€Å"2011 NBA lockout. † Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Bradley, Robert. â€Å"Labor Pains Nothing New to the NBA. † APBR. The Association for Professional Basketball Research. Web. 21 March 2012. Coon, Larry. â€Å"Break ing down changes in the new CBA. † ESPN. ESPN. 28 November 2011. Web. 21 March 2012. FoxNews. com. â€Å"NBA Owners, Players Reach a Tentative Deal to End Lockout. † Fox News. Fox News. 26 November 2011. Web. 21 March 2012 Nbpa. org. Web. 21 March 2012