Smith Wants Talks With League Before Vote On Expanded Season

With NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledging that owners could vote on a proposal to expand the regular season at their next round of meetings in May, NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith said through a spokesperson that the union hopes to engage in talks before a vote is taken.
“Mr. Smith has a basic philosophy when it comes to these issues,” said George Atalllah of Qorvis Communications, according to Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Journal. “He’d like the league and the owners to consider the players as equal business partners when making any decision, particularly when it comes to a decision like extending the season. Mr. Smith is confident that all parties can work collaboratively on this issue and all other items so that everyone involved can benefit.”
Setting aside for now the somewhat bizarre reality that Smith has hired an outside entity to serve as his spokesperson when there are folks on the union payroll who serve that function (then again, they possibly won’t be for much longer), the statement represents either a shrewd effort by Smith to make the expanded season a subject of bargaining separate and apart from the Collective Bargaining Agreement or a fundamental misunderstanding on Smith’s part regarding the concept of collective bargaining.
The NFL can’t unilaterally impose a fundamental change in the work conditions like an expanded regular season without bargaining. So even if the owners vote to add games to the season, the vote won’t be binding on the players.
For now, we’ll give Smith the benefit of the doubt regarding this fairly basic concept of labor law (notwithstanding the fact that he has no labor law experience), and we’ll assume that Smith is hoping that bargaining as to the expansion of the season won’t be engulfed by the league’s broader effort to foist a litany of new terms down the union’s throat in exchange for not changing the current formula that gives the players 59 cents of every dollar earned.
Even if that’s Smith’s goal, it probably won’t work. The league won’t want to bargain over the expansion of the season in a vacuum; the league will want to make this part and parcel of the CBA talks, with the hopes that, if the league relents on its vow to reduce the players’ current take, the union will make all sorts of other concessions.