NFL UPDATE : LABOR NEGOTIATIONS : Neither Side Is Settling In for Any Bargains

They are coming to the Pasadena Super Bowl with a 40-page playbook, “Game Plan ’87.”

The Denver Broncos? The New York Giants?

No.

The book belongs to the National Football League Players Assn., which will expand on its contents during a press conference at an Anaheim hotel Thursday.

The union has distributed the book to all NFL players as a primer for this summer’s negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement with the owners.

The current agreement will expire Aug. 31. It has been in effect since 1982, when the union’s futile attempt to get a percentage of the 28 teams’ gross revenue stalled negotiations and resulted in a 57-day strike that reduced each team’s 16-game schedule to nine games, producing an approximate loss of $275 million based on league estimates of $30 million a week in lost revenue and union estimates of $9 million a week in lost salaries.

Is another strike now likely?

Will there be another partial season?

It is too early to tell, but the chances for a quick and easy agreement don’t seem good.

The union’s playbook, for instance, features a priority list of eight negotiating items, foremost of which is the call for viable free agency, the adoption of guaranteed contracts and an increase in the owners’ pension contribution so that the union can cover 400 players who played before 1959 and are not covered by the current plan.

The owners can be expected to oppose all of those demands. In fact, fearing a reduction in TV revenue, they are prepared to ask the players to give back some of their previously won rights and benefits. Said Jack Donlan, executive director of the NFL’s Management Council:

“If there is a loss of TV money or even only a marginal increase, the owners will be looking at what I would call concessionary bargaining. Their goal won’t be to hold the line but to get back in a profit mold, which means taking back some of the benefits that the players have enjoyed.”

Donlan and his union counterpart, Gene Upshaw, have had a series of preliminary meetings and are expected to meet again here this week to set up a negotiating timetable. Donlan, however, doesn’t expect anything definitive to be discussed until after the league meetings, which begin March 16, and the union’s annual convention, which begins a week later.

“The history of these negotiations is that the players have waited until a new TV contract is negotiated to determine it’s magnitude,” Donlan said. “That contract should be negotiated and announced by the time of the league meetings.”

The five-year network contracts that are now expiring brought the NFL $2.1 billion or about $17.6 million a club annually. There has been widespread speculation that the networks, citing lower ratings and the dissatisfaction of sponsors over escalating commercial costs, will offer significantly less this time.

If that happens, Donlan said, the impact on the league and the collective bargaining negotiations will be dramatic. “We’ve got to negotiate an increase (in TV revenue) just to stay even with our 1986 costs,” he said. “And we’ve already got about 1,200 (multiyear) contracts in the computer that indicate salaries will be going up another 20 to 21%.”

Donlan said that in 1981, a year before the current bargaining agreement was negotiated, the average NFL salary was $90,000. Last year, he said, it was $225,000--the union contends that it was $205,000--excluding bonuses and the clubs’ pension contributions. He said the average 1985 player payroll of $15.9 million was more like $17 million with pensions and insurance figured in.

“If you multiply that by 28 clubs, you get a figure between $476 and $490 million,” he said. “Our total TV revenue last year was $493 million, which means we’re taking all of our TV money and spending it on player salaries.

“We have a system that’s dependant on a big TV hit every four or five years. The commissioner has been able to double our TV contract every time it comes up for negotiation. If that doesn’t happen, the owners will have to take a hard look at where they stand.

“Seven clubs lost money on their football operation in 1985 and there would have to be significantly more when you add in interest and taxes. The clubs get 62% of their revenue from TV. They keep encountering new and increased expenses without the benefit of new revenue. We play a 16-game schedule compared to baseball’s 162, and we carry 55 to 56 players per club (including players on injured reserve).”

Upshaw, the union leader, would not be interviewed on specifics for this story, saying that would detract from his Thursday press conference, which is expected to be attended by several hundred of the writers and broadcasters covering the Super Bowl.

He did say, however, that the union was not in favor of a strike, and that free agency loomed as the key issue. “That’s the last thing I want,” he said of a possible strike. “I don’t even want to think about it. If they’re willing to sit down and negotiate, I think we can avoid it.

“If we can reach some type of an agreement on the free-agent issue . . . we’re the only sport that doesn’t have it. Everybody says, ‘Suppose you get it and it’s just like baseball, with no movement?’ But at least we want the opportunity. This is not about economics.”

In an unpublished interview with The Times last fall, Upshaw also mentioned free agency as the key issue. “We are going to have free agency as of August 31, 1987,” he said, alluding to the date on which the current agreement expires.

He also spoke of the five-year growth in salaries and said it stemmed, in part, from competition with the United States Football League, which has suspended operations, and that, without that competition, salary growth should return to a more realistic level. Free agency, of course, could replace the USFL as an inflationary factor.

On paper, the union already has free agency in that any player with two or more years of service can move to another club when his contract expires. In reality, however, it doesn’t work and isn’t used because:

--A free agent’s former club can still retain him through a process known as the right of first refusal.

--The signing club must compensate a free agent’s former club with draft choices determined by the number of years the player has been in the league and his salary.

The union now wants unrestrained free agency, urging in its playbook the elimination of the right of first refusal and draft compensation, and saying that owners whose teams reach the playoffs should be compensated monetarily, as are the players, because that would provide them with an extra incentive to bid for top players and eliminate the “collusion” and “gentleman’s agreements” by which the owners now refuse to bid.

The union suggests giving the owner of a wild-card team $1.7 million, the owner of a division champion $2 million, a conference champion $2.25, a Super Bowl loser $2.5 and a Super Bowl winner $3.5 million.

There have been times in the past when the union has bargained away free agency.

Why? Upshaw, alluding to previous union officials, said: “They thought it was necessary to get union representation and financial advantages (in other areas).”

This time?

“There’s nothing coming up that’s worth giving this up for,” he said.

“This is not an economic fight. A player has a free choice. This country was founded on free choice. We’re the only industry that doesn’t have it.”

Said Donlan, in response: “If they’re talking about liberalizing the current free-agency system, there’s probably ways that can be done. If they’re talking about scrapping the current system in favor of unfettered free agency, the answer is no.

“We think that the existing system, which is based on parity and designed to let the worst teams get the best draft choices, is what makes the game so great and attractive. We don’t intend to change or scrap it.

“The players talk about free agency as if it’s their only avenue of movement, but the current collective bargaining system has allowed more than 50% of the players to move without (obligatory) compensation through trades, waivers and releases.

“We say to the players, ‘Look at what your average salary was in 1981 and look at what it is now.’ Not bad. I mean, if the system was designed to generate money for the players, it’s impossible to say that it isn’t working.”

There has been some speculation that the union will eventually accept the owners’ desire for random drug testing in exchange for free agency, though Upshaw maintains that 75 to 80% of the players oppose random testing and he employed the grievance system last fall to successfully block Commissioner Pete Rozelle’s bid to unilaterally impose it.

The union’s playbook cites the protection of a player’s privacy as the cornerstone of any drug plan but suggests a willingness to stiffen penalties for players who have repeatedly failed drug tests and to put “more teeth into reasonable cause testing.”

The drug issue, despite its seriousness, has all the aspects of a bargaining chip, but for whose satisfaction and what purpose is uncertain.

Of the union’s two other high priority items, Donlan said:

--There is no way the owners will approve guaranteed contracts, “not with baseball sitting out there paying more than $30 million to players who aren’t playing any more.”

--The owners already contribute $12.5 million a year to the players pension plan and another $21 million a year to the severance fund, which is designed to assist released and retired players in their transition to another career.

“We don’t believe that the severance concept has worked all that well,” Donlan said. “The owners would probably be willing to put that $21 million in the pension plan, which would bring their contribution to $33 million, the same as in baseball.

“I have a feeling, however, that the players want to retain the severance and increase the pension at the same time. I’m not sure they can have the one without a compromise on the other.”

The rhetoric can be expected to heat up, along with the summer temperatures.

Is a strike inevitable? In its negotiating timetable, found on Page 34 of “Game Plan ‘87,” the union has scheduled a strike authorization vote for May.

In charts and words it disputes Donlan’s negative economic view, saying that NFL revenues have continued to grow, that luxury boxes, improved marketing and stadium contracts and the advent of cable TV have widened revenue sources.

It contends that NFL clubs averaged $28.6 million in revenue in 1985 and averaged $3 million in profit. It contends that the average revenue will increase to $38.6 million in 1991 because the networks will again deliver a hefty contract.

The union further tells playbook readers that its own survey of network advertisers proved that ABC, NBC and CBS made $100 million in 1985 as opposed to the networks’ contention that they lost $75 million.

The union, in a conclusion on Page 39, says its slogan will be the same as it was in 1974, when it first sought free agency: “No Freedom, No Football.”

Will the owners prove adamant about concessionary bargaining?

Donlan predicted cutbacks in the severance and bonus systems and an attempt to restrict growth in the minimum salary scale, which represented the players’ biggest victory in the last negotiations.

“The NFL has been good for TV and its sponsors and they’ve been good for us,” Donlan said. “We don’t want to destroy the system that has created that.

“We’ll make every effort to avoid a strike, but the players tend to look at the short term and we have to look at the long term . . . where we will be 10 years from now if we accept this or that.

“What I’m saying is that we won’t capitulate just to insure against a work stoppage.”

Times Staff Writers Tom LaMarre and Bob Oates contributed to this story.