December 08, 2004
Earthshaking
Gwen Knapp totally misses what an amazing statement Donald Fehr made regarding drug testing.
Don Fehr made his big announcement as if he were reading a casserole recipe. The executive director of the baseball players' union has never been a particularly lyrical speaker, but Tuesday his delivery broke records for deliberate dullness. He doused a lot of other people's flaming rhetoric with a big, slowly poured pail of water.
"The Players Association and the commissioner's office have been engaged in discussions with respect to potential amendments to the steroid-testing provisions of the basic agreement,'' he read from a formal statement. "At its meeting today, the executive board received a full report and, after discussion, authorized us to attempt to conclude an agreement consistent with those discussions.''
Still awake?
Awake? I nearly jumped out of my seat! The players have convinced Fehr to do two things that go against what he stands for as a labor lawyer:
- Allow his members civil rights to be further violated.
- Reopen a completed negotiation.
This is a bombshell. The union has always been about protecting the richest of its members by driving up free agent prices. That was fine as long as the payoff appeared to be related to talent. But now the rank and file see steroids as taking money out of their pockets. The playing field is no longer level in their perception, and they want to go back to competing on talent, not drugs.
It's an amazing development. The owners, over the last 30 years have tried lockouts, scabs and collusion in an attempt to gain concessions from a strong union. For the most part, they've failed. It took players cheating against each other to bring about this change.
How this bodes for future negotiations is anyone's guess. By acting now, Fehr is likely heading off dissention that would weaken his hand in the next collective bargaining round. He'll likely have a united union behind him once again.
But it's an extraordinary opportunity for the owners as well. I hope they see this a chance to build a partnership with the players, rather than as a way to extract blood from them (figurative blood, that is). Building a level of trust here will go a long way to avoiding a work stoppage at the end of the current contract.
I'm hoping this is a defining moment in player-owner relations. Given their histories, it's not a big hope.
Posted by David Pinto at
07:53 AM
|
Cheating
|
TrackBack (1)
I'm not a lawyer but what civil rights are being violated? You need to take a blood test to work at Home Depot. It's a condition of employment.
I will be a lawyer shortly and the general rule is that it's okay to require a test prior to employment but once an employee is employeed you need a particular level of suspicision related to that employee before you can perform random tests.
I know people who work at places that have random drug testing, and these aren't gov't jobs or high security jobs in the least. It's just a piece of paper that you sign when yoiu agree to be employed there. In fact, if I remember correctly, *I* used to work at a place like that, too. I had forgotten about that.
The really amazing thing here is that the Union is actually listening to the union members! Unheard of!
i would say civil rights are violated because of being unsure that test results will be private.
i don't care if you work for home depot for minimum wage or for mlb for zillions - you should be entitled to basic medical privacy.
I guarantee you that the instant Fehr gave his statement a group of owners decided that the union could be crushed in the next negotiations. Expect to see a strike/lockout/scab players nightmare once again now that the owners think the players will crack.
'should be entitled to basic medical privacy.'
Can you cite what civil right that pertains to? I'd almost guarantee that the words medical privacy aren't in the constitution. I'd say that since drug testing exists in both the NBA and NFL it's legal if it's agreed upon. I think that the players union is crazy to try to block testing to protect steroid use but what do I know.