NHL teams, agents and others with a financial investment in hockey are having problems finding insurance to cover their looming labor battle.
It's an absence we've seen before. Insurance to cover losses from sports work stoppages has been scarce, if not nonexistent, for 22 years, since Major League Baseball collected on a $50 million strike insurance policy in 1981, only to settle that year's 50-day strike four days before the policy was to expire.
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| Other unions are getting better at resolvingdifferences. In sports, work stoppages have become the norm. |
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Since 1972, 13 labor disputes in the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB have resulted in work stoppages. There were only 20 new labor agreements across the leagues during that same span. In terms of being able to work through their disagreements in a timely manner, they've only gone 7-for-20. Not a very impressive shooting percentage.The insurance industry isn't the bad guy here. The onus instead falls on the NHL and its players' association, and our fear is that the league and its union have seemingly all but thrown in the towel in this fight, more than a year before the current agreement expires.
No one will be surprised if the players get locked out in September 2004. By league orders, each team has contributed $10 million to a fund designed to ride out the storm, while union leaders have stressed to its membership to save money and have warned of no hockey for up to two years. Being a business boy scout is always a good idea, but that's a lot of canned goods this far out from the windy season.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has repeatedly asked the union to come to the negotiating table, but NHLPA Executive Director Bob Goodenow has asked for a proposal first. While the lines of communication seem open, neither side — unfortunately — has budged from there.
We understand that labor negotiations are driven by the clock and that deals traditionally get done at the last minute. We would like to see that timetable accelerated in this case and would hope the NHL and the NHLPA would learn from the early conversations being had by their counterparts at the NBA and NBPA.
The NHL, two of whose teams have suffered recent bankruptcy proceedings, can hardly afford another work stoppage, which would be its third since 1992. While there are other off-season concerns — including possible rules changes and preparing for new TV negotiations — none of them will matter if there's no one on the ice in 15 months.
The teamsters or newspaper guild refuse to concede a strike 15 months out. According to the National Labor Relations Board, there were only 19 work stoppages in the United States last year, down from 29 in 2001. That's among 1,100 unions encompassing 16 million workers. While some consider it foolish to compare machinists and pressmen to millionaire athletes, the fact is that the trade unions have a far better success rate at resolving their differences, while work stoppages have become the norm in sports.
The legacies of both Bettman and Goodenow are riding on the events of the months ahead. We hope they will be proactive in their pursuit of a new working agreement and not put their sport in peril. If they fail to act, the hockey industry shouldn't be surprised that there's no insurance, nor that there won't be any sympathy if they can't keep everybody on the ice. The surprise should be that the insurance agents answered their calls at all.
