I apologize but another Impasse question

If a player(foreign or not) is already under contract with an organization and if there is a strike and that player decides to cross the line to play. How can he be considered a replacement player, isn't he a current player? He is already on the organization's roster. Couldn't you have a team filled half of replacement players and players that were currently on the teams roster? To me it would seem a player under contract is a current player and not a replacement. Eventhough, he is rejecting the PA's strike. How do the courts make that distinction?

 

A very good question. I'd like to have an answer from Wetcoaster or Mudcrutch if possible.

 

Great questions, i wondered that myself. I hope someone knows the answer

 

I'm no lawyer (thank god, lol) but I would think anyone under contract with a team, once an impasse is declared, those contracts become null and void, setting up any PA player to cross the line.

 

I would like to know this question to... as i said in another thread: Can Jagr cross the line and play for the Rangers? Is he legally able to with all these immigration laws etc., can Mike Peca play for Buffalo? Naslund play for Canucks?

 

The question of why he would be called a "replacement" player is a matter of semantics. The term "replacement player" has no legal definition. The term "replacement" is loosely applied to any employee that crosses during a work stoppage and takes on certain legal protections when the work stoppage ends (e.g. the right to keep his job once union players return to work, etc.). So, to make a long answer even longer, the fact that a particular player has/had a contract does not preclude him from being called a "replacement player". The fact that he, irrespective of his contractual status, went to work at a shop during a work stoppage is enough to earn him the legal protections of being a "replacement employee". In your particular example, it makes him a "scab" in the vernacular as well.

And player contracts do not necessarily become null and void. During a work stoppage, performance of the contract is made impossible/impractical, creating the affect of being a free agent. As neither side is performing on their contract, the player is free to engage in activities that would not be permitted if the contract was active (as in, playing for another organization). Both sides can agree, if/when a new CBA is passed, to activate all the already existing contracts by integration into the agreement. So basically, they are not necessarily null and void so much as they are merely on pause.

 

The contracts are in effect on hold since labour law recognizes that during a legal lockout or strike the employer is under no obligation to pay and the player under no obligation to perform.

The restrictions on not playing for other teams or organizations in those contracts would not apply so a player under contract to an NHL team if he decided to be a replacement player, and did not require a work permit or visa, could play for the team of his choice. In effect they are all free agents.

Of course any NHLPA member who crossed the line would have his union membership yanked. The players who became replacement players in the NFL were never allowed to rejoin or apply for memebership in the NFLPA and the same for those players who played scab ball in 1994.

 

Hey, this sounds familiar.