What are the lessons of the NBA lockout?
By
Monica Moorehead
The 191-day-old National Basketball Association lockout was
settled on Jan. 6.
Under the new seven-year collective-bargaining agreement, no
new contract for a player can exceed $14 million--and only
players with at least 10 seasons can get that much. Two other
salary caps were established: $9 million for players with four
to six years in the league, and $11 million for those who have
played between seven and nine years.
The billionaire NBA owners continue to have no limits on
their wealth.
The NBA Players' Association did win an important concession
in terms of rookie salaries. Rookies will now be assured a
minimum annual salary of $287,500. The owners felt they could
live with this aspect of the agreement because rookie salaries
would do next to nothing to substantially increase their
payrolls.
The players also won a sliding scale for veterans.
With the agreement, the NBA owners now exert more control
over salaries than do owners of any other major sports industry
in the United States. Led by Commissioner David Stern, these
super-rich owners began their attacks last fall. They rendered
the 1995 collective-bargaining agreement null and void by
refusing to pay the players their contractual salaries,
shutting down training facilities and not letting players have
any verbal contact with their coaches.
What was at stake with this unprecedented lockout?
Money--and lots of it. Because the NBA has become an
international center stage for some of the cream-of-the-crop
basketball players, billions of dollars have been generated in
ticket sales, merchandise and TV revenues.
Who would control the resources?
At the heart of the lockout was this issue: Which side was
going to control these resources? The owners or the
players?
This year, the NBA will garner $2.6 billion from the
National Broadcasting Corporation and Turner Network Television
for the right to televise a number of games featuring some of
the most popular teams. The owners were guaranteed to receive
these payments whether there was a basketball season or
not.
The reason for the lockout was that the owners wanted to set
maximum and minimum salaries for the players. In effect,
however, the owners wanted to lower the present salary limit.
As it turned out, the owners and management were able to
achieve this goal and extort big concessions from the
players.
What are some of the lessons that can be learned from this
lockout? First of all, even though many of these players have
become millionaires, they were outmatched by the super-rich
owners.
Many of these team owners are also some of the biggest names
in corporate America--such as Ted Turner, who is also a
capitalist media titan.
In fact, sports teams are increasingly being bankrolled by
media conglomerates. So forget about objective reporting of any
labor struggle.
Unfortunately, the players did not have any visible broad
support from the masses of people. A great majority of the fans
drew an equal sign between the players and the owners as far as
blame for the strike went.
It would have been helpful if the players had put out an
official statement to the fans on their view of the lockout,
and also if some of the most influential labor unions had come
to their defense.
This did not happen. As a result, the players became open
prey of the mainstream media. And the media never hesitated
going on a tirade comparing how much the players made to the
average salary of the fans.
Not a day went by without the big-business media sticking it
to an African American NBA player for "complaining" about not
being paid. These media attacks were not only racist in
character but had the effect of shielding the billionaire
owners from the masses.
These same media, it should be recalled, never put a
positive spin on any union struggle.
The players, while doing their best to promote unity and
solidarity among all the players, found themselves in a
weakened position when some of their key members began to
criticize the union for not compromising more with management.
In order to save the union from being decertified and to save
face with disgruntled fans, the players were forced to concede
to management.
All in all, the players put up a valiant fight against some
of the powerful ruling-class elite from Paul Allen to Ted
Turner. Like any fight between labor and capital, this was just
another phase in the struggle over which side will control the
surplus value workers produce through their talents and hard
work. In this case, the surplus value is the entertainment
provided by these talented athletes and the profits this
entertainment provides.
In the long run, it will take the mobilization of the entire
working class to support not only the NBA players but all
workers--especially the most exploited and oppressed. Then the
day will come when the people will control all the wealth and
cultural talents that they create.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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