NFL PLAYERS STRIKE: DAY 21 : NFL Players Offer to Return If Owners Allow Mediation

The striking National Football League players offered Monday night to return to work--under certain conditions--if team owners agree to mediation and arbitration of their contract dispute. However, the negotiator for the Management Council indicated the plan would not be accepted.

“We told Gene (Upshaw) many times, we’re not interested in arbitration,” Donlan said Monday night.

NFL players have been on strike for three weeks, but owners have continued to stage games with replacement players the last two weeks.

The players’ proposal came after Sunday’s breakdown in contract talks.

The conditions mentioned by Upshaw included:

--Reinstatement of all strikers to rosters for the rest of the season.

--That the 1982 Collective Bargaining Agreement would remain in effect until a new contract is reached.

--All player representatives and alternate player representatives would be protected for the rest of season.

--All issues currently on the table would be submitted to mediation. After six weeks, all issues still outstanding would be submitted to binding arbitration.

“The players feel this is the way to end the dispute. If the owners are willing to agree (to the conditions), the players will return to work,” Upshaw said.

Upshaw was flanked by more than three dozen players, although a handful of the player representatives left before the news conference without commenting.

Upshaw, asked if this was a last-move kind of offer, said: “I would think so. I would say, if the owners decline this, we are out for the duration, out for the year.”

But he later hedged on that, saying he would continue to seek negotiations even if it was rejected.

One important management official, Tex Schramm of the Dallas Cowboys, first offered a flat “No,” to the proposition because of the arbitration provision, but he later softened that to say a response would come from today’s meeting of the Management Council Executive Committee. Schramm is a member of that committee.

Donlan had suggested mediation on several occasions, but the union declined. Upshaw said the difference this time would be that mediation would be followed by binding arbitration. An arbitrator would have the authority to reach a compromise on any point rather than choose one side or the other, as is the case in baseball salary arbitration cases.

Upshaw said he was hopeful that the players could be back in time for next Sunday’s games. However, he said that if a return couldn’t be worked out by then, he hoped NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle would call off a third weekend of games involving replacement players.

Asked what incentive the owners might have to accept this proposition, Upshaw said: “We hope they would do it for the integrity of the game.”

Upshaw said he hadn’t been in contact with Donlan or Rozelle and said there wasn’t an actual vote on the union’s change of tactics.

“We don’t need to vote at this time,” he said. “We have a pretty good idea of how we all feel about this.”

There is no meeting scheduled with Donlan, but Upshaw said that he had written letters to the 28 team owners, asking them to help end the dispute. He said, however, that that didn’t rule out bargaining with any representative of management, including Donlan and the rest of the Management Council.

“Jack has my home number. He knows where I can be found,” Upshaw said.

As for the replacement games, Upshaw said: “The owners created the problem. I think they’ll find a way out of it.”

In Cincinnati, the Bengals said they will vote today on whether to continue to strike or return to the team.

“We had agreed beforehand at a meeting today,” kicker Jim Breech said. “First we’ll be briefed by Boomer Esiason on what was said at the players meeting in Chicago.”

Esiason is the team’s union representative.

Wide receiver Cris Collinsworth, designated the spokesman for striking Bengals, said the players will decide their course of action as a team.

“If the majority wants to come in, we’ll come in. If the majority votes to stay on strike, we’ll stay on strike,” he said.