Unionized workers in Detroit to get $54,500 bonus

by Joanne Coutts

The Detroit Lions’ win over the Minnesota Vikings on December 24th clinched the division title for the first time in 30 years. For this feat each player will receive a $54,500 bonus with the potential for additional payouts depending how they fare in the playoffs. This money comes from a playoff pool created by the NFL’s revenue-sharing program. Does this sound a little bit like socialism?

The NFL suffers from many identity crises. It promotes nationalism while yearning for the global appeal of soccer. It cloaks itself in militarism and extracted $5.4 million from the Department of Defense in exchange for patriotism spectacles. It aids billionaire team owners in appropriating taxpayer money to build giant stadiums ($110 million in the case of Ford Field) while positioning itself as the sport of the “blue collar worker.”

However, the NFL identity crisis on which sports writers have spilled the most ink is the tension between the league’s deeply capitalistic goals and its need to embrace at least parts of socialism to achieve them.

If you type “NFL socialism” into an internet search engine, many articles will pop up, arguing that various aspects of the NFL are or are not socialist. These generally focus on the draft, which gives the teams with the worst win/loss records in the previous season first choice of the best players moving from college to the NFL each year, thereby giving the teams that need it most first access to new resources.

They also discuss revenue sharing, which distributes television revenue equally among all teams regardless of how many people watch their games on any given Sunday, to spread the wealth and allow teams in smaller cities like Green Bay to remain competitive with larger ones like New York. And they argue that the salary cap, which prevents teams from accumulating all the best players by paying them more, means that wealthy team owners cannot gobble up and hoard all the “best resources” for themselves.

These measures have the goal of ensuring parity across the league, and have resulted in 12 different Super Bowl winners in the past 15 years. In contrast, the English Premier League, where none of these socialist wealth-distribution mechanisms exist and unfettered capitalism reigns supreme, has seen only 5 different clubs win the league during the same period.

Credit the union (or blame the union)

One central tenet of socialism, worker’s unions, is mostly overlooked in these articles. The strength of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) has been a key factor in the success of the league, and over the years the NFLPA has gotten its members everything from clean jock straps to a $1 million per year minimum wage.

At the NFLPA’s first meeting, in 1956, players from 11 of the 12 teams signed on to be represented by the new union. Their demands included a minimum $5,000 salary whether playing or injured, clean uniforms, and equipment paid for by their teams. In 2014, the latest year for which information is available from the Department of Labor, 1,959 or 91% of the NFL’s approximately 2,144 active and practice squad players were voting members of their union. An additional 3,130 former players were also NFLPA members. Union membership remains strong because of the NFLPA’s success in raising player’s salaries and improving working conditions and benefits, and its relatively modest dues, $31,000 per year, which for context represents 4.1% of the league’s 2023 minimum salary ($750,000 per year).

In the summer of 1968, the NFLPA, led by Detroit Lions offensive guard John Gordy, held its first strike and soon after ratified its first collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The CBA included an increase in minimum salaries, exhibition game pay, and a $1.5 million contribution by NFL owners to a pension fund. The most recent CBA, ratified in 2020, makes these gains look paltry by comparison. Some of the highlights which we might all drool over include:

Revenue sharing — The CBA requires that players receive 48% of gross football-related revenues generated by the league. This means that 48% of TV broadcast deals, ticket sales, league-wide and local sponsorships, gambling, and even soda and hot dog sales must be spent on player wages and benefits. Retail store workers receive around 17% of revenue in wages, for restaurant workers it’s 25 to 30%, and in some manufacturing plants worker’s share of revenue can drop as low as 10%.

Minimum wage — In 2023 minimum-salary players on a team’s active roster received a 6.4% increase from $705,000 to $750,000 per year. Under the current CBA, minimum-salary players will see a 33% increase from their current salaries, hitting the $1 million mark by 2030. The recent UAW deal comes close to this, raising base wages by 25% by 2028. For the rest of us, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that we will see average wage growth of 3% per year, for a total 18% increase by 2030.

Health and Pension Benefits — NFL players and their dependents receive a variety of health benefits which continue for five years after they leave the league, after which they can opt to continue in the health plan at their own expense. Specific health conditions related to playing football, such as joint damage or neurological care, are covered for life. They also get a league pension, averaging $43,000 per year, starting at age 55 and can join the league’s 401K, Annuity and Second Career savings programs. While many U.S. workers participate in 401K or Retirement Savings Plans, only 11% of private sector workers have access to a pension plan.

1987 Players Strike. Image from NFLPA.com

The NFLPA has been aided in achieving all this by advantages most unions can only dream of. Its coffers are filled with revenue from marketing and endorsement deals in addition to player dues. Its members hold almost all the “means of production” of their product, making scabbing all but impossible; all attempts during the various player strikes and owner lockouts to replace the product on TV and in stadiums have been a dismal failure.

The union’s leadership is predominantly made up of rank-and-file players. Hands up: who has heard of NFLPA President JC Tretter and of Jalen Reeves-Mabin, who currently represents the Lions as a vice-president of the union? Perhaps because of this rank-and-file leadership, many of these gains benefit rank-and-file over “star” players. For example, increases in minimum salaries and benefits for all, combined with the salary cap, limit the money available to pay “big name” players.

We should all be so lucky as to be represented by such an active, well funded, and powerful union. With that power comes responsibility to stand in solidarity with workers around the world. As our Detroit Lions head to the playoffs let’s push the NFLPA to use its power to support workers across the country, as they did for Amazon workers in Alabama in 2021, and across the globe. Tell the NFLPA to demand a #CeasefireNow!

Send a message https://nflpa.com/contact. Tweet @NFLPA @JCTretter

Go Lions!!!

Notes and Links

Inflation 2023:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/12/heres-the-inflation-breakdown-for-november-2023-in-one-chart.html

Jalen Reeves Mabin is Detroit Lion on NFLPA Executive Committee:

Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_Players_Association

NFLPA Revenue spending:

https://paddockpost.com/2022/12/11/how-revenue-is-spent-at-the-national-football-league-players-association/

NFLPA:

https://nflpa.com/ and https://www.influencewatch.org/labor-union/nfl-players-association/

Paid militarization of the NFL:

https://fee.org/articles/its-time-to-end-the-paid-militarization-of-the-nfl/

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/nfl-dod-national-anthem-6f682cebc7cd/

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/sep/11/the-nfl-and-the-military-a-love-affair-as-strange-and-cynical-as-ever

2020 CBA highlights:

https://operations.nfl.com/inside-football-ops/players-legends/2020-nfl-nflpa-cba-need-to-know/

NFL post season pay:

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/agents-take-an-inside-look-at-postseason-pay-and-how-brock-purdy-can-benefit-most-by-winning-super-bowl/

Detroit Lions Player Report Card:

https://nflpa.com/detroit-lions-report-card#treatment-of-families

https://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/bears/ct-cb-nfl-cba-players-vote-20200312-q5nz2afepncpbo2masulsl2nqm-story.html

NFL and Socialism:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-nfl-owners-are-exclusive-socialists-102946280.html

https://fee.org/articles/is-the-nfl-draft-socialism/

https://www.sj-r.com/story/news/columns/2014/10/24/the-nfl-is-socialistic-enterprise/36089303007/

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/sep/19/english-football-got-the-commercialism-of-us-sports-but-none-of-their-egalitarianism

Capitalism in UK football:

https://jacobin.com/2020/08/english-football-capitalism-manchester-premier-league-fc

Detroit Lions history:

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The Detroit Socialist
The Detroit Socialist

Published in The Detroit Socialist

The newspaper of the Detroit chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America

Detroit Democratic Socialists of America
Detroit Democratic Socialists of America

Written by Detroit Democratic Socialists of America

The Detroit chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, join us: http://www.metrodetroitdsa.com

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