Lessons from the NFL lockout ... Nationalization ...
The NFL union referees will return to the field Thursday after being locked out for more than three months and replaced by inexperienced stand-ins.
For football fans, it has been trying to watch the replacement ref bumbling, which culminated Monday night with a game-changing decision in the Packers-Seahawks game, dubbed by one YouTube user “the worst call ever.”
Non-fans have less reason to be jubilant, but the incident has nonetheless been a significant labor dispute, with lessons beyond the importance of non-biased, well-trained referees in dangerous, high-stakes sports.
As Alternet’s Sarah Jaffe pointed out , the dispute highlighted the growing prevalence of lockouts, which are importantly different (in fact, the opposite) of strikes. A lockout is when managers decide to “shut workers out of their job in an attempt to force the union to concede… In the case of the NFL, the referees’ jobs have been filled by less-qualified workers — scabs, in the old union parlance.”
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/lessons_from_the_nfl_lockout/
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