Pro Sports Unions Are Worthless
NHL CBA
I realize I'm late on the NHL season being cancelled, but I've been lazy. Those of you who don't already know that the 2004-2005 NHL season has officially been cancelled probably don't care anyway.
As with any professional sports organization, I scoff when the players strike. $8M??? Heck no, we want $10M a season! Yes, I understand that their "working career" is shorter than the rest of us. I know that star players bring in millions of dollars in ticket sales and other various revenues. I don't care.
I make no secret about my thoughts and feelings toward most unions. The goal of most unions seem to be to get the most money for the least amount of work. This is not why unions were formed in the first place. Unions were originally created to uphold workers' rights, not to push to make excessively high salaries even more excessively high. Working excruciating hours, dangerous working conditions, being paid in coupons instead of money — these are the issues that unions were created to stop and/or avoid. From what I could find, here are some of the various leagues' minimum salaries:
- NHL: $200,000 with a proposed increase to $300,000 (so far)
- NFL: $225,000
- MLB: $300,000
- NBA: $385,277
- WNBA: Maximum salary capped at $174,000. I just threw that in to annoy people.
I don't know about you, but the lowest figure mentioned ($174k) would be a substantial pay raise for me. As I mentioned, these players are not exactly in dire straits financially. Unions need not push for more money for the players. They have been out of work for months . . . have you seen any players begging on the street?
I really need to demand that my employer pay me higher wages. After all, I'm only working until I'm 67.5 . . .
Just in case anyone is thinking this, I want to mention that yes, I do realize that the NHL is in a lockout phase, which is more of a reverse strike. I am well aware that, technically, it is the owners/league that has prevented the players from playing this season. I hope you're not so naive as to believe that players' and unions' demands in previous years are not to blame.
Of course, if you really miss hockey, you can watch "highlights" over at hockeyfights.com. For additional clips, check out their video clips forum thread.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, February 19th, 2005 at 20:07 by Novac and is filed under All, Athletes, Economics, Education, Games, Hockey, People, Politics, Sports.
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