Thunderstruck said:
The owners would welcome decertification.
The players would hate the results and would end up forming a PA with a much more compliant attitude.
Check the NFLPA and the history of decertification for a brief history lesson.
Decertification worked fairly well because the NFLPA determined they could not win a labour law war so they decertified. They did that because the courts said that as long as there was a union they could not use antitrust law - many sports law and labour law experts are very critical of that court decsion but there it sits until the US Supreme Court reconsiders. The NFLPA was seeking free agency and the end of the Rozelle Rule.
The NFLPA executives and legal counsel were retained as personal representatives of the players and series of antitrust suits as personal actions and class actions were brought. It took over five years but the owners finally gave in, paid $195 million to settle the antitrust suits and accepted free agency. Whereupon the NFLPA reconstituted as a union and signed a new CBA.
BTW the salry cap that was part of the deal had been proposed by Ed Garvey, Executive Director of the NFLPA to try to get a greater portion of the revenue pie for the players. Kind of ironic. Here is David Stern talking about the genesis of the salary cap in an interview:
How did the NBA come up with the salary cap?
Stern: It wasn't our idea. Angelo Drossos had the idea of a salary cap. Ed Garvey from the NFL(PA), his idea was to say to the owners, "I want to share the revenues," and they said, "Absolutely never, we'll shut down before we do," and they did.
The NBA players led by Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing threatened to decertify and in fact had decertification notices signed and in the hands of union, when the NBA backed down.
Until 1998 with the passage of the Curt Flood Act, the MLBPA had no alternative but to use labour law because MLB had a judicial exemption from antitrust which was eliminated for labour relations matters. That is why in 1994 the MLBPA had to fight the owners at the NLRB to get an injunction ending the "scabball" experiment. In the last MLB negotiations after the Curt Flood Act was in effect the MLBPA threatened decertification and the MLB owners backed off their cap demand.
Decertification is a nuclear deterrent but if the NHL players determine they have more to gain than lose - and the way that the dispute is going that may be sooner rather than later- it could be a viable option. The last thing the NHL will ever want to do is play without antitrust protection - no draft, no restricted free agents, no cap, etc.
