To hear it from his sympathizers, Gary Bettman is not to blame for the third lockout of his regime. The NHL commissioner, we’re supposed to believe, is nothing more than an extraordinarily well-paid messenger for the owners.
If the Board of Governors’ intent is to reach a negotiated settlement of the lockout, then either a different message or a different messenger to deliver the message should be on the agenda.
Because, we’re told, nothing infuriated the union rank-and-file more on Wednesday when the league rejected the NHL Players’ Association’s proposal in short order than the commissioner’s insinuation the players have been unwilling to engage in serious bargaining.
And nothing through this lockout — in which everyone understands the outcome will be measured only by the scope of player concessions — has united the players more dramatically in support of Don Fehr than the way in which the league two days ago dismissed the union’s proposal out of hand.
This was the league essentially confirming Fehr’s prophecy. The executive director had told the moderates within the union — of which there are many simply waiting for an offer they can accept so they can return to work and resume their careers — that offering further compromise would not be reciprocated.
The NHLPA proposal reduced the difference in make-whole to $182 million over five years. That amounts to $1.213 million a year per team. The difference would be reduced by $40 million to $50 million if make-whole for this season is pro-rated.
A million a team and it’s non-negotiable on the league side, yet the Canceler-in-Chief’s message is that it’s the union that is unwilling to negotiate.
The league isn’t giving on money, or on contracting issues, either. The moderates on a PA conference call early in the week suggested to Fehr that yielding on economic issues would prompt the league to drop, or at least significantly modify, its requests relating to systemic matters.
The PA leader told the athletes that though that’s what everyone but everyone had been telling him, not once had the league signaled its willingness at the bargaining table to relent on those issues.
Fehr is not an “I told you so” guy, but if he were, those are exactly the words he would have used in Wednesday night’s conference call with the players. But then, there was no need for him to state the obvious.
There is a growing sense that the union will decertify and file suit against the league in order to force an end to the lockout. Preparation to decertify, as PA leaders have informed the players — and again on Wednesday, with the subject moved to the front-burner — is not mutually exclusive from pursuing a negotiated settlement with the league.
Decertification and going to court is risky business. The situation is not analogous to the 1994 baseball strike that bled into 1995. Some months after cancelation of the 1994 World Series, the owners opted to open spring training with replacement players — scabs by any other name — while unilaterally imposing work rules that would have centralized contract negotiations with the commissioner’s office and would have abolished an agreement not to collude on salaries.
That led to an unfair labor practices complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board that eventually was heard in Federal District Court — in the Southern District of New York — by current Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Justice Sotomayor’s ruling in favor of the players in granting the NLRB injunction against the owners’ attempt to institute their own work rules and in ordering reinstatement of the expired collective bargaining agreement led to a quick resolution of that strike.
The NHL is not there yet. The owners have not unilaterally imposed their own work rules. But they sure are trying. And the players don’t need Fehr to see that or tell them that.
They can see it and hear it for themselves every time Bettman delivers the league message.