But the strife of the negotiations over a month or more foreshadows future struggle between the billionaire owners and the millionaire players.  A prolonged negotiation suggests a lack of good faith in the negotiating parties. The issue is no longer the details of the contract, but who will gain the upper hand at the end of the negotiations. It is about power, not equity.

According to U.S. Legal.com:

Good faith bargaining requires employers and unions involved in collective bargaining to:

• use their best endeavours to agree to an effective bargaining process
• meet and consider and respond to proposals made by each other
• respect the role of the other’s representative by not seeking to bargain directly with those for whom the representative acts
• not do anything to undermine the bargaining process or the authority of the other’s representative. https://definitions.uslegal.com/g/good-faith-bargaining/

When employee unions and employer representatives respect these guidelines the negotiation process moves forward  without acrimony or public displays of indignation. When they don’t, it becomes an exercise in finger-pointing and jockeying for the high ground. It makes a mockery of collective bargaining.

The tenor of the baseball negotiations could become pandemic. The next battle front could be the Police Unions and City/ Town governments. As policemen are singled out for brutality and murder, the reputation of policemen/ women has come under fire. The union’s role has always been to defend the accused police officer against accusations and public opinion. That is what we expect of unions.

But when the “Blue Wall” of silence and resistance rises up, the pretense of “due process” and “good faith” begins to evaporate.  That Wall refuses to recognize that some cops are bad, and some public incidents are sufficiently heinous to be deplored by the union, as well as the press. The Wall insures that the police association will sometimes end up defending felonious acts and turning deliberately against those who protest for justice.

And the “Blue Wall” may not be the end of such social divisions. We are a polarized society, perhaps too quick to take sides. There are dozens of other unions who will stand in solidarity with the police officers’ associations or will take up their own causes against public protest. Unions are all about preserving their members’ reputations. Protesters are all about pointing fingers at whole groups of people. This is explosive material.

This is a plea for “good faith” on all sides of the walls we build in the wake of crimes and indignities. The idea of bargaining in “good faith” is not new and has infused the best of collective bargaining negotiations in the past. Playing “hard ball” is all right for games, but not for disputes where lives and reputations are at stake. “Hard ball” may even set the stage for more conciliatory negotiations. But it is not the game we play to reach a settlement, even if the negotiations go into extra innings.

Our goal should always be equity, not power.