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Hope this proves true!!

Does anyone know what the outcome will be if they decertify? I thought the whole point of decertifying was to cause chaos and take away leverage from the owners? I don't think anyone knows what the exact outcome of it will actually be though.
 
If they decertify I guess technically it would make it an open market, and any player could sign anywhere for anything the team was willing to pay out, with no agreement binding players or owners. That could make things interesting.
 
LogGrad98 said:
If they decertify I guess technically it would make it an open market, and any player could sign anywhere for anything the team was willing to pay out, with no agreement binding players or owners. That could make things interesting.
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So big market teams could do whatever they want to get the best players?
 
Theoretically. When a "normal" union decertifies it opens up the field to the company simply hiring whoever they want, including ex-union employees. Here is a page about it:

If the petitioning employees win that election, then the company becomes nonunion and all employees are free to bargain on their own, and negotiate their own terms and conditions of employment. Moreover, if 50% or more of the employees in a bargaining unit sign a petition that they no longer want to be represented by the union, the employer can withdraw recognition without an election if it wishes to do so.
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https://www.nrtw.org/decertification-election
 
If they decertify I guess technically it would make it an open market, and any player could sign anywhere for anything the team was willing to pay out, with no agreement binding players or owners. That could make things interesting.
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Oh i wish that were true, but unfortunately there is a much worse aspect to desertification. You see, if the union desertifies, the goal is to then take legal action to force the lockout to end. The end goal in this isn't to start the season, it is so that individual players with guaranteed contracts can sue their respective owners for unpaid wages, however, without a CBA, the season would not start so there would be no revenue to use to pay the players, thus it would possibly bankrupt the league. That's why this action is such a threat to the NBA. If it were just about starting the season, it would be easier to just sign the CBA.
 
I would bet that any contract would have as a qualifier that there must be an active CBA for the contract to be in effect, otherwise they wouldn't be able to lockout the players and not pay them. If the contracts were not connected to the CBA then the teams would still have to pay the contracts regardless of the lockout. I am probably wrong, but that is my bet at this point.
 
Here is a good article on this subject:

https://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/michael_mccann/11/03/nba.labor.decertify/index.html#

2. How likely is it that the players would prevail in an antitrust litigation?
Not likely.
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The NBA also boldly demands that if the union decertifies in a way endorsed by a court, the league should be able to declare all player contracts void and unenforceable. The league insists that because the Uniform Player Contract (signed by every NBA player) is contained in and governed by the collective bargaining agreement, player contracts should become void once the collective bargaining relationship between the league and players ends. In response, the players can argue that the dissolution of a union should not empower an employer to void contracts between individual employees and the employer.
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LogGrad98 said:
I would bet that any contract would have as a qualifier that there must be an active CBA for the contract to be in effect, otherwise they wouldn't be able to lockout the players and not pay them. If the contracts were not connected to the CBA then the teams would still have to pay the contracts regardless of the lockout. I am probably wrong, but that is my bet at this point.
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Here's a copy of the Uniform Player Contract: https://www.nbpa.org/sites/default/files/EXHIBIT A.pdf

I did a quickie check on this argument by simply searching for the term "CBA" in the Uniform Contract (they choose to use that acronym on the first page) and looked for any provisions that reference the CBA. While the contract references the CBA for a number of issues ranging from disciplinary action to the all-star game to meal allowances there are no non-severability provisions that would seem to allow for destroying the entire contract in the event that there is no CBA. In fact, the contract notably contains no provisions detailing what happens to the contract in the absence of the CBA. Article 20 (entitled "Entire Agreement"), however, states pretty clearly that the contract on its face constitutes the entire agreement between the player and the team and that the CBA acts purely supplementary.

Amazingly the uniform player contract doesn't even bother specifying what body of law the contract will be governed under (as a lawyer this is truly shocking to me). Theoretically this could lead to players under contract with California teams getting different results than players under contract with Texas teams if they have different law about how to interpret contracts where some provisions are rendered unenforceable by the existence of new facts.

EDIT: Just for fun I ran through the article of the 2005 CBA that deals with the Uniform Player Contract. There are no obvious provisions there either that void all UPCs if the CBA ceases to exist. Notably there is an entire section dedicated to things that void the UPC, and decertification of the union or non-existence of a CBA is not contained therein.
 
Good info. Thanks kicky. What do you think of the guy's analysis in the link I posted?

Also, how can they lock out the players if the player contracts are not connected to the CBA? I know this is pretty complicated, but in my feeble mind it seems that if the contracts have no provisions about how they would be administered in the event the CBA expired, then couldn't the players start suing immediately to get paid for their contracts? Wouldn't the contract still be binding or is it a matter of the contracts being tied directly to games played or something like that?
 
How long do these contracts last? In other words, when might be the next time we can expect another one of these awesome lockouts?
 
Sources told Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! for a piece earlier today that Stern has the authority to come off the owners’ demands on some of the system issues, which might be encouraging news.


NBA commissioner David Stern has the authority to make minor system alterations to the owners’ latest labor offer to the players to try to complete a collective bargaining agreement and end the lockout, ownership sources told Yahoo! Sports.
 
LogGrad98 said:
Good info. Thanks kicky. What do you think of the guy's analysis in the link I posted?
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Meh. Some useful information, but it's hardly a good primer on labor law. Then again, I suspect I'm not the target audience.

For example I think it oversells some precedent like Tom Brady v. NFL. In that case, all the court determined was that the NFL lockout couldn't be ended via injunction; they didn't decide the underlying antitrust claims at all. He also cites a bunch of cases that fundamentally differ from the NBA's situation because of the existence of statutory labor anti-trust exemptions enjoyed by the NFL (although these are weaker than baseball's exemptions) following the AFL-NFL merger and the then-existence of a collective bargaining arrangement (referred to in the legal literature as a non-statutory labor exemption) between the NFL and its player's association. The NBA has neither the statutory exemption and the entire premise of the suit is based around a true decertification of the union so I'm not certain how much water those precedents carry.


Also, how can they lock out the players if the player contracts are not connected to the CBA? I know this is pretty complicated, but in my feeble mind it seems that if the contracts have no provisions about how they would be administered in the event the CBA expired, then couldn't the players start suing immediately to get paid for their contracts? Wouldn't the contract still be binding or is it a matter of the contracts being tied directly to games played or something like that?
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One complication you might not be thinking about here is that pro sports features an intersection between anti-trust law and labor law. These issues are getting all bundled up in the articles but should be considered separately by the courts. Whether or not the NBA is practicing unlawful restraint of trade is a separate issue entirely from whether or not their lockout is legal and the rights and obligations of employee/employer. They get bundled up because of the aforementioned non-statutory labor exemption (a delightfully mouthy legal phrase that no one else would have come up) because while employer and employee are engaged in collective bargaining the league enjoys protection from anti-trust actions brought by the union because of a national policy favoring collective bargaining outcomes over judicial ones. The entire point of decertification is to delink the anti-trust and labor law areas and allow current union members to pursue anti-trust claims. Stern's argument, essentially, is an attempt to prevent that delinkage of labor and antitrust concepts regardless of what individual player contracts between teams and players say.

To your question about how lockouts proceed: employers as a general rule pay employees for service. In the NBA's case that's generally defined as games, practice, training camps etc. Their position is pretty simply no games, no practice, no pay. Lockout activities that proceed in such a fashion have long been considered legal under the National Labor Relations Act. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Truck_Drivers_Local_449 . There are some legal restrictions on the use of the tactic, which is why you're seeing some articles talking about undue hardships, but they're generally legal when bargaining in this fashion.
 
Basketball_Romantic23 said:
Sources told Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! for a piece earlier today that Stern has the authority to come off the owners’ demands on some of the system issues, which might be encouraging news.


NBA commissioner David Stern has the authority to make minor system alterations to the owners’ latest labor offer to the players to try to complete a collective bargaining agreement and end the lockout, ownership sources told Yahoo! Sports.
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Yes, but sources also stated that Stern was given the authority to make only SLIGHT budges on system issues. Hope it's enough.
 
Thanks for the explanation kicky. It certainly would yield some interesting stuff if they decertified then players started suing.
 
Sirkickyass said:
One complication you might not be thinking about here is that pro sports features an intersection between anti-trust law and labor law. These issues are getting all bundled up in the articles but should be considered separately by the courts. Whether or not the NBA is practicing unlawful restraint of trade is a separate issue entirely from whether or not their lockout is legal and the rights and obligations of employee/employer. They get bundled up because of the aforementioned non-statutory labor exemption (a delightfully mouthy legal phrase that no one else would have come up) because while employer and employee are engaged in collective bargaining the league enjoys protection from anti-trust actions brought by the union because of a national policy favoring collective bargaining outcomes over judicial ones. The entire point of decertification is to delink the anti-trust and labor law areas and allow current union members to pursue anti-trust claims.
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OK, understandable (I think), but if the union members must decertify in order to sue on the basis of anti-trust, then aren't they suing on the basis of antitrust actions (if any) outside the bonds of the prior CBA and lockout?

In other words, if the NBA doesn't act very anti-trust-y (e.g., saying "Go ahead and start your own league" and not standing in the players' way) post-decertification, how much of a standing could the NBAPA have, especially if they are the ones who break things off?

Not much, says my my armchair uneducated unlicensed lawyer side, although it appears that some of the hotshot agents might like to try their hand at post-decertification antitrust litigation. Didn't the NFLPA fail on this point also?
 
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