6 Major Reasons You Should Care About the Labor Battles in Professional Sports

http://www.alternet.org/6-major-reasons-you-should-care-about-labor-battles-professional-sports



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1. Lockout, not strike. Many people mistakenly call any work stoppage in professional sports a strike. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Brad Kurtzberg at Bleacher Report wrote, “Nobody is more responsible right now for the fact that we do not have NHL hockey than the owners.”

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2. Lockouts are on the rise around the country. It's important to talk about the difference between a strike and a lockout because lockouts are on the rise , and not just in professional sports.

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3. Safety matters. Those careers are short because players, particularly in hockey and football, put their bodies on the line every time they take to the ice or the field. Hits are part of the game, as much so as dazzling athleticism. We gasp when a body hits the boards, when a slip or a dodge to the wrong side lands a player at the bottom of a pile of bodies, and we cheer when they get back up, seemingly uninjured, and keep playing.

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4. The owners epitomize the 1 percent. So who are these owners, anyway? They're the billionaires, not just the 1 percent but the .001 percent -- what Timothy Noah calls “stinking rich.” James Irsay , the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, has a net worth of $1.5 billion; Jeremy Jacobs , the hardline owner of the Boston Bruins – who's leading the charge for concessions from the players (and a leader in forcing the last lockout, too) -- is worth about $2.7 billion, largely from selling snacks and beer at sporting arenas. And they're making bank on the game, too—the NHL is back to excellent shape after the season-ending 2004-2005 lockout, after which the owners got pretty much everything they wanted . And we've already noted how little the NFL's refs cost the league in relation to its revenues. Could there be an ideological reason these ultra-wealthy businessmen want to break the unions?