Their war chest is full and the NFL Players’ Association (NFLPA) on Thursday said it is telling members to prepare for battle, with the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) set to expire in 2021.
Sounding very much like a lockout by owners is inevitable, NFLPA president Eric Winston told a news conference that he has warned players to save their money and get into a game-day mindset.
“They’ve got to know what they are up against, they got to know what’s coming and they have to understand, just like in a game, the tactics that are going to be used against them and how to fight against it,” Winston said.
The current CBA was signed in 2011 after a 132-day lockout. It was a negotiation that players were widely seen as being on the losing side, and Winston said that the executive committee had learned its lesson.
The NFLPA has “hundreds of millions of dollars in the war chest” and has made an effort to educate players — many of whom have never been part of CBA bargaining — about the negotiating process, he said.
“We’re able to take the dues and put them away into an investable war chest for a work stoppage,” Winston said.
“I’m not saying we are sitting here waiting for a lockout. Hopefully down the road we can figure something out, but at the end of the day, to me, it would be malpractice if we weren’t ready,” he added.
Many of the issues that are to be on the bargaining table are familiar: money, revenue sharing, and player health and safety.
Others are new, with the legalization of gambling, the use of medical marijuana, and rules to cover player protests and their right to freedom of expression.
“CBAs are wonderfully dense things that have a lot of issues in them and anybody who is a member of a union and actually engaged in collective bargaining knows that it is one of the messiest, nastiest things you can do,” NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith said.
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