Inherently Unstable
Like everyone else I was shocked to hear that the NHLPA executive had chosen to fire Paul Kelly even though it probably shouldn’t have surprised anyone. The Union was broken in the labour war of 2004-05 and it is weak, fractious and inherently unstable. Paul Kelly did not really get a chance to make it strong, united and stable.
As I have written several times since 2005, it is very hard to see a positive direction for this Union. The last thing most players want is another fight with the NHL. Even if that were not so, how can the NHLPA convince themselves they could ever win a fight with the owners now? They can’t – and won’t – trust each other. When push comes to shove, the owners will get whatever they want from the next CBA, just like they got what they wanted from the last one. In other words, the NHLPA has no real power and no good reason to exist except to protect the owners from antitrust law and to subsidize weaker franchises to preserve jobs.
Changing all that was Paul Kelly’s job and he clearly failed. What’s the possibility anyone else will succeed? Close to zero in my view, at least for the generation of players who lived through 2005. It really doesn’t matter whether the new Executive Director is more militant. Paul Kelly tried to manage his house union with a mostly cooperative approach and had he survived, he would have won nothing but the occasional crumb. The next Executive Director may take a more confrontative approach, but it will still be a house union and in a worst case, the hot air and empty threats will hurt revenues and thus hurt the player paycheques. In a best case, everyone yawns and he wins nothing but the occasional crumb.
Why does this organization exist? How many players would be better off if the NHLPA folded? Why do they want to be associated with what more than one pundit has declared to be a laughingstock? Who can blame any player who chooses apathy? We’re going to keep seeing NHLPA car wrecks like this one because the players are apathetic, and because the union is weak, fractious and inherently unstable.
Eric Duhatschek thinks the NHLPA should be burned to the ground and rebuilt from scratch. I’d just burn it to the ground.
Jesus, Tom, is there no hope for this organization? You can’t tell me no executive director has done the players any good in their tenure, can you?
But what about benefits to retired players? Is that one major reason why the NHLPA continues to exist and will continue to exist, to provide some security to retired players? Or I’m completely foff?
Jesus, Tom, is there no hope for this organization?
I don’t think so. I think most players would be far better off with no union and no collective bargaining agreement. I don’t think highly skilled employees need unions. They do better negotiating directly with the employer.
They could maintain an Association to administer a pension fund and to collect and distribute the money derived from licensing fees, but otherwise what good is a union? It does more for the owners than the players.
You can’t tell me no executive director has done the players any good in their tenure, can you?
When the union was strong and united, it did, but even then it was not clear that the players were better off for having a union. Weak and divided it is worst than worthless. All it is doing is propping up franchises that should be broke and paying enormous salaries to ex-executive directors.
Tom -
It’s pretty obvious in retrospect that Goodenow’s strategy in 2004-05 of assuming that the NHL would break before the players was a poor one. It’s time for these guys to develop a new strategy.
The thing that the NHLPA has going for it is that they now have an intimate understanding of the NHL’s business and where the various teams sit in terms of revenue. They probably know how a new CBA is to be approved. It seems to me that any reasonably competent litigation lawyer should be able to come up with a CBA that makes things better for enough teams to get the necessary votes, while at the same time improving things for the players. The target, if I was in charge of the PA, would be stripping those excess profits that teams like Toronto, Montreal and the Rangers are making, redistributing them to the poorer teams and then negotiating a bump in the player’s share. I don’t think it’s particularly complicated and developing a proposal that fractures the owners – which they didn’t do in 2004 – needs to be the goal.
And all Gary has to do is say no. I don’t think you can work it so enough poorer teams benefit and even if you could, I don’t think Gary can sell a CBA that has the opposition of the ten richest teams.
I expect Bettman will be asking for a larger percentage for the owners. There will be no lockout since a failure to get agreement leaves the parties playing with the existing agreement. The owners could probably live with that indefinitely. I think the league would probably like to get rid of long contracts, but it isn’t that important to them because only big revenue teams can really do it and they want big revenue teams to dominate. The Olympics? It doesn’t need a new CBA to put the kibosh on them.
Otherwise? Absent real structural change, the only real interest either party has is in the percentage of revenues. The owners would like to increase their share, but absent that, they’d be happy to freeze it. The profits increase as revenues go up once the player share stops at 57%. All they have to do is keep saying no.
To get anything, the players have to be willing to strike. Under what circumstances can you imagine that the players would vote to strike? I don’t think there are any circumstances where that happens.
Do you think Goodenow had a good strategy to adopt in 2004? I don’t think so. In retrospect, the players were not prepared to do what they said they were prepared to do in the lead up to the dispute to avoid tieing salaries to revenues. In retrospect, the best Goodenow strategy was to cave in the summer of 2004. I’m not sure that would change anything today.
It seems to me that the owners will always have the hammer in so far as each of them will be wealthy regardless of whether the NHL is operating. For the most part (and I qualify this statement with exceptions like noted astrophysicist Joe Juneau and Dr. Randy Gregg in mind) the players are able to earn exponentially more for their hockey skills than for their non-hockey skills. I’m not sure there’s a union exec that can overcome that.
It leads one to wonder at what point the players would abandon the NHL for other options…and it could lead me to a very long and ill-informed post about the amount and nature of league revenues…better to feed myself a bed-time lager and tuck myself in.
It seems to me that the owners will always have the hammer in so far as each of them will be wealthy regardless of whether the NHL is operating.
True, but this is not different for the NHL than for any other business. The big problem for the NHLPA is that players make an enormous amount of money each year and have short careers. Any work stoppage has a very large and very adverse affect on them.
It leads one to wonder at what point the players would abandon the NHL for other options…
I don’t think they will abandon the NHL. I think they should abandon the NHLPA. That would have profound implications for the league, but I think that’s the best course of action for the players.
I think the reality is the owners will always have the upper hand because of the composition of the union itself. Look at what happened during the last lockout, most of the Europeans went home and got paid to play shinny in their home countries. Another group of North Americans followed them “to stay in shape”. That left many third and fourth line guys who weren’t probably good enough to pick up contracts overseas sitting at home missing out on paycheques so that the top echelon of players effectively had limitless earning potential. That’s never going to fly in a long labour disruption.
I think the players had a shot at getting a few scraps with Paul Kelly. Clearly this escrow situation would need to be addressed. The players have a cap on what they can earn, it is ridiculous for them to be in a position to underwrite the owner’s risk in running their business.
Generally speaking, does anyone care so long as it doesn’t disrupt the game? I mean fights between millionaires and billionaires over the spoils from a child’s game is a sideshow.