In the two weeks since photos were leaked from the Greg Hardy criminal case, Hardy, the Cowboys, the NFL, and the NFL Players Association have received plenty of criticism. The NFLPA recently fired back, defending its defense of Hardy.
In an op-ed published by USA Today, NFLPA spokesman George Atallah responds to a pair of items from Christine Brennan regarding the treatment of Hardy.
“Christine Brennan’s two recent columns on Greg Hardy can be summed up in a few unimaginative simple phrases: ‘Greg Hardy, bad; Union, bad; Dallas Cowboys, bad,'” Atallah writes. “What I find to be even more intellectually dishonest is the expression of such opinions with a lack of fundamental understanding of the role of a union in these situations. I will explain it in simple terms: The NFL Players Association is a labor union. We have a Federal Law fair duty of representation to our members. Unions protect rights, not conduct. Collective Bargaining Agreements have to be enforced. We do not condone misconduct.”
Atallah is right. In the relationship between management and labor, the union operates as a defense lawyer, representing the rights of the employee regardless of how the union feels about what the employee did. The union has no more freedom to decline that obligation than does an attorney appointed by a court to represent an unsavory person who has done worse things.
I’ve sat across from a convicted killer in handcuffs and shackles, who was facing new charges from something he’d done in prison. I hated every moment of the experience. But in that job — and in plenty of others — you don’t get to choose to not do the work simply because you don’t like the person you’re working with or for.
“Every NFL player, past, present and future, should be glad that their union has the fortitude and resources to defend their rights and that not one of our members is on his own,” Atallah writes. “We have too many recent examples of what happens to a worker’s rights when management, in our case the NFL, thinks it has the ability to arbitrarily apply standards or discipline that violates the CBA. It is easy to take the position that what Greg Hardy did was wrong, but unlike Brennan, we have a responsibility to consider things beyond the moral outrage.”
Hardy could have chosen not to engage in inappropriate behavior. The Cowboys could have chosen not to employ him. But the union had no choice on the question of representing Hardy’s rights. As long as he remains in the NFL, the NFLPA has a mandatory obligation to protect his rights in the relationship with the league.