Good info. Thanks kicky. What do you think of the guy's analysis in the link I posted?
Meh. Some useful information, but it's hardly a good primer on labor law. Then again, I suspect I'm not the target audience.
For example I think it oversells some precedent like Tom Brady v. NFL. In that case, all the court determined was that the NFL lockout couldn't be ended via injunction; they didn't decide the underlying antitrust claims at all. He also cites a bunch of cases that fundamentally differ from the NBA's situation because of the existence of statutory labor anti-trust exemptions enjoyed by the NFL (although these are weaker than baseball's exemptions) following the AFL-NFL merger and the then-existence of a collective bargaining arrangement (referred to in the legal literature as a non-statutory labor exemption) between the NFL and its player's association. The NBA has neither the statutory exemption and the entire premise of the suit is based around a true decertification of the union so I'm not certain how much water those precedents carry.
Also, how can they lock out the players if the player contracts are not connected to the CBA? I know this is pretty complicated, but in my feeble mind it seems that if the contracts have no provisions about how they would be administered in the event the CBA expired, then couldn't the players start suing immediately to get paid for their contracts? Wouldn't the contract still be binding or is it a matter of the contracts being tied directly to games played or something like that?
One complication you might not be thinking about here is that pro sports features an intersection between anti-trust law and labor law. These issues are getting all bundled up in the articles but should be considered separately by the courts. Whether or not the NBA is practicing unlawful restraint of trade is a separate issue entirely from whether or not their lockout is legal and the rights and obligations of employee/employer. They get bundled up because of the aforementioned non-statutory labor exemption (a delightfully mouthy legal phrase that no one else would have come up) because while employer and employee are engaged in collective bargaining the league enjoys protection from anti-trust actions brought by the union because of a national policy favoring collective bargaining outcomes over judicial ones. The entire point of decertification is to delink the anti-trust and labor law areas and allow current union members to pursue anti-trust claims. Stern's argument, essentially, is an attempt to prevent that delinkage of labor and antitrust concepts regardless of what individual player contracts between teams and players say.
To your question about how lockouts proceed: employers as a general rule pay employees for service. In the NBA's case that's generally defined as games, practice, training camps etc. Their position is pretty simply no games, no practice, no pay. Lockout activities that proceed in such a fashion have long been considered legal under the National Labor Relations Act. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Truck_Drivers_Local_449 . There are some legal restrictions on the use of the tactic, which is why you're seeing some articles talking about undue hardships, but they're generally legal when bargaining in this fashion.
