NFL Players’ Strike Aftermath : Union Goes to Court Over Lost Salaries, Games

The NFL Players Assn. sought an order Friday that would force team owners to pay them a week’s lost salary and have this weekend’s replacement games stricken from the league standings.

The action came as players drilled under the direction of National Football League coaches for the first time since Sept. 22, when the 1,585 union members walked off the job. The work stoppage collapsed Thursday when the players agreed to return to work without a contract.

Dick Berthelsen, general counsel of the union, said officials filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board to force owners to pay players for the current week and void the results of this weekend’s non-union games.

The union charged that the league unfairly discriminated against striking players for their union activity by refusing to let them play, costing the strikers about $20 million in lost salaries.

It also sought to permit players to participate in this weekend’s games, but Berthelsen said that action was filed too late for any action before this weekend.

Berthelsen expects to have a response from the NLRB on the charges “within a month.”

“The fans should know that Sunday’s games may not end up counting in the eyes of a federal judge,” Berthelsen said.

Meanwhile, John Jones, a spokesman for the owners, said teams will be allowed to keep up to 85 players on their active and inactive lists next week, and would have to name their 45-man active roster by 4 p.m. next Saturday.

That could set up possible confrontations if the union and non-union players share the same locker rooms and practice together.

The final roster size will probably be determined at a league meeting in Kansas City Oct. 27.

Tex Schramm, a member of the Management Council’s executive committee and president of the Dallas Cowboys, said it was likely the owners would decide to keep the active roster at 45 but that a “reserve squad” might be added so that coaches could keep replacements who had impressed.

But he said it was unlikely the roster would be increased to 49, a figure agreed upon during the negotiations but never formally approved. “That’s a sensitive figure right now,” Schramm said. “I don’t know that we’d want to go for that.”

Players saw the owners’ plan to hold more replacement games as a vindictive move. The next games with regular players will be Oct. 25.

“Management is treating us like puppy dogs coming back with our tails between our legs and tossing us a bone and patting us on the head,” said Ron Heller, offensive tackle of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Jack Donlan, executive director of the Management Council, denied that the owners were rubbing it in. “That’s just totally untrue,” he said.

“You may have an inordinate amount of injuries to your regular team,” Donlan said in an interview with United Press International. “There was a lot of concern about that.

“I guess the only other question left is when they come back and you know you’re not going to play them, should you pay them? I think the teams took the position that they’ve taken a pretty good financial bath in this, so why should they be paying two squads on Sunday?”

Donlan urged the union to return to the bargaining table to work toward a new collective agreement. “I still think that at some point in time we are going to have to sit down and we are going to have to reach an agreement,” he said.

Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the union, claimed that the returning players could have been ready to play by Sunday, saying: “That just shows the owners really don’t care about anyone but themselves.”

Upshaw said the league is in disarray because management believes its power is limitless after the strike.

“What they have now, really, is total chaos,” Upshaw said. “We have 28 teams and 1,600 players, and (the owners) can do whatever they want, they don’t have any restrictions.”

Though unable to extract any gains from the walkout, Upshaw said he had no plans to resign. “I’m not resigning at all,” he said. “Gene Upshaw will be the executive director of the players’ association until the players decide they don’t want Gene Upshaw as executive director. Right now, I have a contract and I’ll be there.”