http://www.greerconsultinginc.com/ Jason Greer expert in employee, industrial & labor relations discusses Arena League Football Players & the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations or AFL-CIO. Greer Consulting 314-643-NLRB (6572).
My name is Jason Greer, Labor Relations and Employee Relations Expert and Former Board Agent with the National Labor Relations Board.
Recently, the Arena League Football Players Union joined the AFL-CIO. You might be thinking to yourself "what's the AFL-CIO and why does this matter to me"?
Well, for clarification the AFL-CIO stands for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. It is literally the largest grouping of labor unions in America. The reason why the Arena League Football Players Union joined forces with the AFL-CIO is relatively simple. It's all about leverage. The Arena League is expanding and the players are going to want their cut of the revenue. They believe that the AFL-CIO will provide the necessary resources to help them negotiate contracts on a level that they've never experienced.
This is just the beginning of what professional sporting organizations are going to see in the near future. After Northwestern University Football players made the move to become unionized, organized labor realized that the sports arena is now fertile ground. And here's the catch...it's expensive, fertile ground. So much so that unions are catering new strategies around how to persuade athletes to join their cause.
The proverbial game is changing. And it's going to be a painful couple of years for the NCAA and owners of sports organizations that have fooled themselves into believing that their athletes would never consider unionizing.
