NFL PLAYERS STRIKE: THE AFTERMATH : Raiders : Striking Regulars Admit Defeat, Return Early

In a footnote to the history of labor relations among sports teams in the 1980s, the remaining striking Raiders beat their union’s call to return to work Thursday and walked back into the team’s El Segundo facility.

They may, in fact, have become the first team fully back on the job, which is ironic, since two of them--James Lofton and Brian Holloway--are members of the union’s executive committee, which directed the strike, and a third committee member, former Raider Mike Davis, joined several of their meetings, giving them a full 30% of the union’s guiding body.

You want a hint of how badly this strike went for the players?

“The thing is, when you start a game, you play it as hard as you can,” Lofton said. “That’s what we attempted to do. We may have fallen a little bit short.”

They may have returned minutes before their union announced that the strike was over, but it was a day after management’s deadline for playing in, and getting paid for, Sunday’s game against the Chargers. Thus Vince Evans will continue at quarterback, and 14 of the Raiders’ 22 starters won’t suit up.

Thursday’s action began in the morning with a delegation led by player representative Sean Jones coming into the facility for a chat with Raider management, in the person of scout George Karras.

The players left and joined their fellows at the office of Air Transport Local 502, several blocks away, for a 60-minute meeting. Then they got into their cars, drove back to the Raider facility, and for the first time in 24 days, pulled into the parking lot.

In other camps, returning players were discovering that the owners’ deadline was firm. In some cases, the players then turned around and left, to return next week. The Raiders stayed, although they didn’t look very happy as they trooped into an auditorium, where they were addressed by Coach Tom Flores.

“I greeted them,” Flores said. “I’m happy to have them back because, as a coach, obviously you’d like to see them back.”

The returning rank and file, almost to a man, refused to talk to reporters. Jones, trying to put the best face on it, denied that they were subdued. “You must have seen a different bunch of guys,” he said. “The guys are happy to get back to work.”

But Lofton wouldn’t deny it. “Oh yeah, it was disappointing,” he said. “When we met this morning, we were under the impression we would possibly have a back-to-work agreement. We saw that slip away from us. So it was disappointing to come back to work under those circumstances.

“As the weekend passes, the guys who are players (will be working out)--you know we like to play. That’s probably one reason we came back.”

The returning players will work out there today and Sunday but separately from the current squad.

Will Lofton find sharing the facility awkward?

“It’ll be tough,” he said. “They are doing what we do. The one funny thing about this strike is, a lot of guys will get a chance to see what it feels like to basically be cut, to watch somebody else doing their jobs. This will be the first time that a lot of players actually turn on their televisions and see how their teams are doing. That maybe will rekindle a fire under players who are disappointed about the strike.”

Will teammates be angry at teammates?

“It’s the nature of the business,” Lofton said. “You play for teams that sometimes hate other teams. In a situation like this, you realize who stood by you, how long they stood, what reasons they had for not standing.

“It’s like the elephant, you never forget. The guys are human. They learn how to forgive but not all the time to forget.”

And Lofton, himself, is he angry at anyone?

“The funny thing is,” he said, laughing, “I’m not bigger than anybody who went in, other than Chris Bahr.

“It’ll be tough at first but it’s like anything. You work together, you work in very close quarters and you have to get the job done. There are friendships that took a slap in the face, and a lot of times those can be mended.”

Lofton also said he thinks another strike is “possible” the next time the contract is up, but this one is history.

“There’s no point in not going back,” linebacker Linden King said. “We’re beat. We got beaten. That’s all there is to it.”