Forum Post: I don't give a flip about football but this is important
Posted 12 years ago on Sept. 26, 2012, 12:42 p.m. EST by myows
(133)
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I had no idea about this until yesterday but it seems that the NFL referees have been locked out since the beginning of the season because they don't want the owners to take away their pension plans! Where have we seen this scenario before? How about all over corporate America! (Caterpillar, Con Edison,Verizon, AT&T,etc...)The NFL is swimming in money, it brings in 9 billion dollars a year, yet the greedy pig owners (all multi millionaires) have a thorn in thier sides in the form of the refs pensions. The refs don't make nearly as much as you think, (about 140k a year) and would like to have some retirement security. The commissoner is a disingenuous prick who tells reporters with a straight face that he doesn't have a pension plan. Yeah but he does not mention to those reporters that he makes 10 million dollars a year! Boycott these greedy bastards until the ref's pensions are reinstated.
How much does the NFL or it's fans support OWS? Not at all. All they bring is a political agenda. The final score is OWS 1, NFL-0. The game is over. The season is over. OWS won the Super Bowl. I want my victory jersey.
Not really that important. They work on average 30 hours a week during the main season and pre-season and they make 149,000 dollars and the league wants to get their pay up to 189,000 by 2018.
That's a lot of money to me. Especially for part time work that's not year round. I don't think the NFL is really an area we need to focus on. They could afford it. They should probably just do it. An average 40,000 dollar raise over 5 years is pretty nice. Still the NFL is not a focus point for me.
However here is a good article on this topic
"Four things the locked out NFL referees, league are still negotiating"
1 - The money to pay officials comes from a pot of $18 million funded by the league. The NFL wants an increase in the average salary for officials, who are part-time employees, from $149,000 to $189,000 by 2018. Referees (the head officials) and officials who qualify for postseason games would make more, the league said. The raises each year would fall between 5% and 11%, the league said. The officials have asked for more, but have not publicly disclosed how much. They say the league, which has revenues of more than $9 billion per year, can afford it."
2 - The league wants to switch from a pension plan to a 401k plan. The league said in a July statement: "No game official will lose any vested pension benefit under our proposal and the clubs will fully fund all pension obligations." But the executive director of the referees association said in an open letter to the media last week that plan would transfer long-term investment risk to the officials and would cut the league's financial obligation by 60%. Tim Millis said 18 of the league's teams have some form of defined-benefit program rather than a 401k system. The league said their plan will give the officials a larger retirement benefit. The officials have proposed that only new hires be moved to the 401k plan.
3 - According to Peter King of Sports Illustrated the league would like to add three crews of seven people in reserve with the option to use these referees to replace underperforming officials. That would add 21 officials to the pool and officials fear it would affect their job security. Referees are only paid for games worked, so anyone who was "benched" would lose pay.
4 - The league wants to hire seven full-time officials and have them handle training and scouting. The officials' association has said it would OK with that, if the referees were paid a fair amount.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/25/sport/nfl-officials-labor-dispute/index.html
I'll take 140k for one day a week for 5 months any day of the week.
I know it's hard to sympathize when a person makes 140k but the facts are that the NFL takes in 9 billion dollars a year and the owners and players are all muti millionaires, So where is the need to insist that the referee who is making 140k a year (relatively nothing compared to owners and players) give up his pension plan? In my mind this is no different than the corporate greed of a Caterpillar or Con Edison.