It’s been only two weeks since the Super Bowl was telecast to its largest audience evar. It’s hard to imagine that over a hundred and ten million people watched that sporting event, but that viewership lends credence to the claim that the NFL is a nine billion dollar per year business. Now, right on the heels of their triumphant victory lap, the NFL owners have scuttled the collective bargaining agreement they shook hands on with the players association. Turns out the owners didn’t actually plan on ratifying the CBA, they just didn’t want to risk losing all that playoff tournament money if the players called a wildcat walkout before the big game.
Normally, I wouldn’t waste your eyeball energy talking about professional sports players. They represent the group I call The Entertainment Caste — a minority of the population paid vast sums of money based upon how much we consume the entertainment they generate. Whether or not they are worth it is beside the point. There is money to be made, TECs help make it, and they are compensated for running their cog in the machine.
We can all rally around the idea that teachers are easily worth the sums of money that professional entertainers receive, but sadly Budweiser and Coke don’t (and won’t) spend millions of ad dollars to make sure Chad can read. Pictures are so much easier, and prettier. There is, however, a connection between underfunded teachers and millionaire football players. Both are represented by steadfast labor unions.
Right now it seems that most Americans think labor unions represent unpatriotic values and reward people for work they have not produced. This couldn’t be further from the truth, especially when considering the surprisingly common cause of teachers and football players. Many players retire from the cheers of a mega arena with debilitating injuries, having spent most of their adult life on a pretend battlefield, generating nearly ten billion dollars annually in revenue for television stations, commercial products, and sports franchise owners.
The myth of the career teacher has been largely debunked as more and more educators — in the face of budget cuts, parent apathy, mental strain and even physical violence — opt out for a less stressful line of work. Of course, teachers can’t point to millions of dollars in merchandise and television broadcasting fees to justify the stability of their salaries. Nor should they have to. But football players can, and they should. Even still, NFL team owners — part of the upper 5% of wealth holders rapidly leaving the rest of us in the lower atmosphere — feel justified in disregarding a tentatively negotiated settlement. Since teachers don’t score touchdowns they don’t stand a chance.
One of the ways sports franchise owners retain their vast sums of money is by using our tax dollars to erect their monuments to commerce, er, ahem, sports. Did you know that over the last twenty years more than eighty stadiums have been built across North America, and only eight of them were built without using our tax dollars? It’s like a double tax — first the taxes come out of our paycheck, then we pay again for the right to sit in overpriced seats to eat $8 hot dogs. The players should get more money; at least they entertain me while I get ripped off.
Don’t let the NFL owners fool you into thinking the players’ collective bargaining agreement is an obstacle to running the game. We should be smart enough not to give NFL owners any additional ‘Stadium Status’.
Labor unions aren’t the problem with America. The fact is that capitalism has little compassion for those who don’t control the means of production. And therein lies the heart of the problem. I’m certainly not advocating socialism, but without our labor unions the quality of life for many Americans would still be rooted in the 19th century. There has to be room in a capitalistic democracy for more than one economic caste to get a nice slice of the American pie.
More Real Talk from the iC’s. Fight the power – we will keep losing, but we will keep fighting.
DP– did you see this a cpl months back?
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-6-2010/philip-dray
obviously the short short SHORT version but it’s telling who’s on whose side– and who’s willing to let different voices be heard.
Bloomberg is an evil, corrupting man, and he is not alone, as Wisconsin proves.
This is also why I mock the ‘real talk’ of LAUGHTERHOUSE ‘lyricism’; if they were smart enough to recognize the struggle goes infinitely beyond dopey hip-hop I might give them a pass but as it stands…
Has their patron Em ever spoken up for unions? I scorn the phony everything of Shawn Carter but that doesn’t mean the realer white boy gets a pass.
real shit right there, not too familiar with the american system but here in England, unions represent the workers and fight tooth and nail against corporations for their members. In this age of austerity the unions will become even more important in helping their members against mass job cuts and slashing of wages.
The unions are broken. The government keeps calling for more concessions from the workers represented by said unions and almost no incentive is provided. As a civil service worker I know first hand what it’s like to depend on a union whose bargaining power is almost non-existent. All the government/team owners tell the public is that the workers/players are making out like bandits and support this statement by reporting the highest salaries which are far above what the average employee earns.
DP & Brooklyn ‘Lo– ya’ll need a body in the street to fight for your pension etc I’m there. And I know some unions are corrupt, and some protect horrible workers but that is the price we all should pay…
The alternative was bad and the future could be worse.
Q1: Didn’t Ghost mention something about a union on, I think, OB4CL2?
Q2: Has hip-hop acknowledged A. PHILIP RANDOLPH at all, ever?
Not an easy name to rhyme, I admit but the country owes him much, still.
Hip-Hop’s sense of politricks stays focused on the ethereal Illuminati shit but the fight we are going to have to maintain the quality of life versus corporations is the real devil.
Cathie Black as schools chancellor was the tip of the iceberg. NYC is gonna get more fuxed the fux up before it gets better.
Thanks for that Dallas. As a teacher it sucks to be villainized in this current climate. Its the teachers fault that the education system is broken, Its our Unions fault for asking for a living wage, its our fault that kids can’t read. It sucks to be a teacher and the fact is that it sucks so much that most of us burn out with in 5 years. Yet no one looks at the school system. For someone that has always wanted to be a teacher like me, and who give everything to my profession I must choose between living a life in the lower middle class (very low in some areas) not have enough money to pay back student loans or leave what I love.
Yet we rock the same broken school system that was developed in the 1890’s to make immigrants more American and train them for an industrial workforce. An industrial workforce that has been outsourced to the “third world” and is never coming back. Instead of re-creating our education system to push for innovation, creative thought, empowerment, it’s my fault for burning out. Its our students fault for dropping out of a system that treats them like inmates.
Ok off my soap box. Thank you Dallas.
El Maestro,
Don’t get off your soapbox until this shit gets right. I dreamt of being a teacher but I never had the courage to complete college.
The education system is so fucked the fuck up we don’t have the space here to break it down. My mom was a teacher in the NYC public school system. She taught every subject possible to special education students in ‘600’ schools until the city phased them out.
Still and all I sometimes see her students in my travels around the city and they always wish love upon my moms. Keep giving your love to the success of your kids and your students will remember you forever. We ain’t supposed to win under a system that gets energy from CAPITALISING on the backs of others. But you can win. You can win.