Labor Troubles Ahead?

NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Friday that negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union are not going well, but his comments were not as extreme as those of the union leader, who earlier characterized the talks as “one step forward, five steps back.”

“I said a couple of weeks ago that it was one step forward, two steps back, so he stepped back further than I thought,” said Tagliabue, referring to Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn.

“I don’t think the negotiations are going very well, that’s how I would put it,” Tagliabue said during his annual Super Bowl news conference. “I think there needs to be an additional dose of reality on both sides of the table.

“I think to some degree positions are hardening when they shouldn’t be hardening. We have serious economic issues that we have to address and resolve. We have some serious system issues that we need to resolve.”

NFL players and owners have been negotiating for more than a year on a contract extension. The current labor deal, in place since 1993, expires in 2008, though teams would lose the cap that limits payrolls if a new agreement isn’t reached by the 2007 season.

Upshaw said Thursday that he plans to meet with union player representatives on March 9 to begin discussions about taking the NFL to court if there’s no progress in negotiations.

Tagliabue said he doesn’t expect things to get to that point.

“I don’t think we’ll be in litigation,” the commissioner said. “I don’t think we’ll be decertifying the players association. I don’t agree with some of the things Gene said along those lines, but we are not making the kind of progress that I think is necessary.”

He acknowledged that resolution of labor issues is an essential component to moving forward in bringing an NFL team to Los Angeles, because current and potential franchise owners cannot be in the dark about the future of league-player relations.

“If we don’t have a CBA extension it’s going to be a considerable complication,” Tagliabue said. “Because without an extension, issues of how to ensure the stability of a team, how to ensure the proper private financing for a stadium and related issues would be very difficult to resolve.”