Page 360 - Beers With Our Founding Fathers
P. 360
Beers with our Founding Fathers
The governing bodies of professional sports provide the rules for
minimum salaries, fines and other criteria that team owners and
managers must follow. Self-governing professional sports were
appreciated and entertaining successes – until unions came in, for
greed. To what benefit are unions to sports? Every season a sport is
under threat of a ‘lockout’, or strike, until the teams agree to
concessions to players or the governing body agrees to concessions
to the game officials. Professional athletes are truly one of the most
undeserving of the salaries and pedestal of which they are given.
For only a couple hundred dollars per fan you can go buy a ticket,
enjoy a game and all the souvenirs and snacks the sport was meant
to bring enjoyment for; today, most people cannot afford such a
luxury. Beginning in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the enjoyment
of professional sports waned as the athletes, compensated
essentially for their athleticism that was monetized as
entertainment value, would annually go on strike per sport per year
it seemed, over wages and benefits. It is disgusting to see this play
out time and time again, sport after sport and season after season.
Sure, as with any labor force, there are more lower salaried and
fewer higher salaried (the natural bell curve), but professional sports
are entertainment. Labor unions for the middle class worker
certainly are not to the level of professional sports. It is actually an
insult to the middle class worker to have unions represent
professional sports. It reveals the greed of unions at the expense of
the spectator. Hollyweird is also long a target of greed by unions. In
the interest of space, essentially replace sports with television and
movie productions, athletes with actors, referees and others for
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