NLRB: NFL Owners Owe Players Millions

About 1,100 present and former NFL players are owed an average of $13,000 each by their teams because of league actions during the 1987 strike, a National Labor Relations Board judge has ruled.

Benjamin Schlesinger, in a ruling that won’t be filed officially until next Tuesday, held that the owners discriminated against players who struck by refusing to let them play in games on the weekend of Oct. 18, 1987, after the players had agreed to return from their 24-day walkout. The strike was unsuccessful in bringing the free agency they sought.

Schlesinger ruled that they are entitled to that week’s pay plus incentives, a total estimated at $22 million to $25 million, because management “illegally discriminated against the strikers.”

Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn., called it a victory for the strategy of pressing the case in court. The association has decertified as a union, renouncing its collective bargaining role, and there has been no labor contract since Sept. 1, 1987.

The players won’t get the money immediately, however.

One NFL source said the league would appeal to the full NLRB and beyond that to the courts, if necessary.

The ruling stems from the actions of the NFL Management Council on Thursday, Oct. 15, 1987, the day the players decided to return to work without a contract after missing two weeks of games.

But they found the camps closed and were told they couldn’t return until the following week because they had missed the Wednesday deadline set by the owners for reporting. The games of the weekend of Oct. 18 were played instead by replacement players and those veterans who had crossed picket lines after the strike began Sept. 21.

“The deadline rule excluding only the striking players . . . discriminated against them only because they struck,” Schlesinger wrote. “It treats them differently from the entire universe of non-striking players.”