On Thin Ice? Labor/management Relations in U.S. Professional Sports

Professional sports are described as the “toy-box” of life – fun, entertaining, and what we turn to for an escape from everyday stress. Sports are also becoming increasingly referred to as nothing more than “big business” – high paid performers and owners who couldn’t care less about what team, what city, or what fans they play for, as long as they make the big bucks. The latter view is exacerbated by the rancor of events that cause fans to turn away from their teams. The Major League Baseball players’ strike of 1994 and the 2004 lockout of players by owners in the National Hockey League are prime examples of such events. Currently, labor strife is simmering just under the surface of the National Football League, where owners have voted to end the existing collective bargaining agreement two years early. This paper examines the state of labor relations from the management, marketing, and ethics literature and offers a prescriptive model as it can pertain to sports. The authors present a method for building a climate of mutual trust in order to improve the seemingly intransigent chasm between players’ unions and ownership.