Pro sports players unions: NFLPA, NBAPA, MLBPA etc could do so much good to help America organize.

[Union Yes]

Why aren't NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL players using their gazillion dollar per year sports contracts to help fund a push for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act?

They are union members too.

Imagine the possibilities if they actually stopped acting like millionaire spoiled brats and started giving a fuck about everyones right to organize or join a union.

Taxpayers build their BILLION dollar stadiums to fund their union protected mega million dollar contracts. And yet they give nothing back to the cause. The cause that enriched them.

Their union contract. Their right to collective bargaining.

It's time to call on pro athlete union members to help us all enjoy the right to union membership. They have the financial power to help us all protect our right to join a union.

Many athletes have their own charitable organizations yet I have hardly ever heard of athletes ever aiding unions or fighting for unions or starting any organizations that help promote unions.

Imagine if pro athlete union members started an organization that would help us all fight for unions, help us push for passage of EFCA by becoming vocal proponents of pro-union policy. Pro athletes carry a lot of weight. Look at the commercial endorsement business.

Imagine if pro athletes showed Solidarity by publicly standing up for everyone's right to belong to a union. They had soon better. Even their right to belong to a union is under assault by right wing anti-union policy.

It's time for pro athletes to organize and help us fight for unions.

They are union members too.

With the financial clout to help make a difference.

[Ex Lurker]

1. there are a lot of things working against it

this harkens back to the old conflict between the trade unions and craft unions in the 19th century. If the players associations are like unions at all, they're like the craft unions--groups of workers with highly specialized skills, primarily concerned with cutting the best deal possible for their narrowly focused membership, and not concerned at all with the labor movement at large, with which they have little in common.

Add to that the fact that the membership is primarily young with a big turnover. Most are out in a year or two, and even the veterans rarely last more than 5 years or so. There's just not much time for institutional memory to develop. And--these guys get paid so much that they have very little in common with the average working stiff, even though they technically belong to a "union." A few of them develop class consciousness on their own, but not much about pro sports is conducive to labor solidarity, I'm afraid.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

2. I really don't think you should be supporting NAMBLA on a Democratic board.

:evilgrin:

[Union Yes]

3. Probably how freeper lurkers will interpret OP.

:rofl:

:hi:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

4. Oh, I can see the FR headlines now.

"DU SUPPORTS CREATION OF UNION FOR MOLESTORS!"

Followed by a headline about:

"The correct way to corporally punish your wayward child."

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. The public perception of pro athletes is the antithesis of most union members

Many are thought of as overpaid prima donnas who rarely deliver...is that what we want in the public forefront of the labor movement?

[PhD]

6. Sports unions are the reason many people are no longer fans

I know people who still refuse to watch baseball because of a strike over 15 years ago. Hardly great role models in your quest.