ownourgame

Greetings from all of us at the newly updated ownourgame.com!

The 04/05 NHL season is now officially cancelled due to the labour
dispute between players and owners. The 05/06 season is in serious
jeopardy as well, for other reasons. It appears we are heading for the
nightmare labour litigation process the league wants so they can hire
scabs and break the NHL Players Association through a
divide-and-conquer strategy.

Just as the labour negotiations went nowhere, hockey fans can rest
assured that this upcoming war will not go as the league plans. The
situation is too complicated to be won by a single strategy. We believe
the NHL is now damaged beyond repair, and any attempt to break the
players union and ice teams of scabs will further sink the NHL brand.

The Chinese word for "crisis" has a double meaning: danger and
opportunity. There is a danger that pro-hockey will go forward under a
variety of sub-standard forms as competing factions continue with their
gloves off. There is equally an opportunity for players and fans to
take the situation into their own hands and create something unique and
truly amazing, something never before seen in pro-sports. It is the
players and fans who have the true passion, and who have the true
commitment to Our Game. It is the players and fans who should take the
lead.

Visit http://www.ownourgame.com to read our proposal to create a
high-level pro hockey league based on the Cooperative Economic Model
(Co-op). Co-op is a standard business model in use all over North
America. The only major difference between a Co-op and a standard
business is there is no individual or private corporate team owner at
the top of the food chain ****ing money out of the organization. Beyond
that, the operational models of the league and the teams remain
basically the same - minus profit-taking by ownership. All profits go
back into the league and the teams.

Best regards from all of us at ownourgame.com, a non-profit attempt to
bring sanity and community back to pro-hockey

The use of replacement players is going to be very problematic because
of the 'international' (Canada and US) nature of the NHL. US
immigration
law forbids bringing a foreigner in to work where there is a labor
stoppage. So it would be forbidden to use Canadians as replacement
players. I'm sure that Canadian law is even tougher on this point
because Canada is more pro-union as a nation. Additionally, provincial
law in at least two provinces (Quebec and BC) forbids the use of
replacement workers in a labor dispute.

Using European hockey players as replacement players will be
problematic
as well for similar immigration reasons.

So it is much more difficult to use replacement players because of the
partly Canadian nature of the NHL. Even from a purely US point of
view,
baseball was not successful in its legal efforts to declare impasse
in 1995 and use replacement players. I am not sure whether any
Canadian-specific issues were raised involving the Toronto Blue Jays
and the then-Montreal Expos. I seem to recall there was some rumbling
along those lines but the strike ended while baseball was still in
spring training on purely US soil so that issue never came to a head.

No professional sports league has ever succeeded in bringing
replacement
players across international lines. Baseball ended its strike and
replacement player usage in 1995 just before it became an issue. The
NFL tried to use castoff CFL players as replacements in 1987 but was
rejected in doing so by American immigration--of course, there were no
doubt lots of reasonably good former US college players around, so it
was not nearly the problem for the NFL that it would be for the NHL.

Bottom line--I don't think using replacement players is going to fly.
So they've got to work something out with the existing union whether
they like it or not.

anders t

Quoting dash@juno.com in rec.sport.hockey:


Add to that that strong, and rich, forces in Europe are now trying to find
ways to start a pan-European pro league this Autumn. Now is indeed /the/
time for such a venture. Unless the NHL sort things out quickly, the damage
may be permanent, and another Rome will have fallen.


--
All that we see, or seem,
is but a dream, within a dream,
installed by the Machine

markku grönroos

"anders t" <anthu_001@No?SPaM?_hotmail.com> kirjoitti viestissä
news:nakg11h28kk21s0fk87icmob80vrhk27sr@4ax.com...


damage

I don't see any reason for such a league whatsoever.

chris bolus

Hmmm... if that's Markku's view, then it has to be a _very_ good idea!
;-)

--
Regards, Chris #36 (remove rubber to reply by email)
Love Sheffield Juniors! Play at Ashfield - http://www.ashfieldavalanche.co.uk
********** Please don't email in HTML! **********

uy205

: > nightmare labour litigation process the league wants so they can hire
: > scabs and break the NHL Players Association through a
: > divide-and-conquer strategy.

: The use of replacement players is going to be very problematic because
: of the 'international' (Canada and US) nature of the NHL. US
: immigration
: law forbids bringing a foreigner in to work where there is a labor
: stoppage. So it would be forbidden to use Canadians as replacement
: players. I'm sure that Canadian law is even tougher on this point
: because Canada is more pro-union as a nation. Additionally, provincial
: law in at least two provinces (Quebec and BC) forbids the use of
: replacement workers in a labor dispute.

Maybe. Maybe not.

There was one action in this dispute that stands out as so
incredibly stupid, one wonders if the perpetrator has enough
intelligence to draw his next breath.

When Goodenow freed the players to play in any league they
could legally play in, I think he doomed the NHLPA. If the
dispute should reach any court, the first material on the
bench will be pictures of locked-out players suiting up for
European teams and even NorthAm teams. From the newspapers,
over 550 of the 760+ locked-out players displaced other players.
If this dispute goes in front of a judge, there will be
affidavits from the displaced players who were denied the
ability to play because of displacement by locked-out NHLPA
players.

The order from Goodenow should have been tend to your businesses,
coach your kids' team, sweep floors or flip burgers. But lock
up your skates so you won't even be tempted to step on the ice.

I think the NHL owners are driving this bus.

Regards. RAF

mike eisler

Forbidden to use Canadians to replace Canadian and European
players? Why couldn't the NHL balance the replacement
players such that the number of U.S. citizen replacement players equals
the
number of U.S. citizen and green card holders on the current
rosters?

Also does NAFTA change things?

provincial

Yeah sure. No NHL in Canada. That'll last a week or two, until
Parliament changes the law.

No NHL in Quebec or BC then.


The NHL (in the US at least) could attempt to use graduating
U.S. collegiate players. Whether
the public would accept that remains to be seen.

Nope--it is an absolute rule that no work status can be granted to
a foreigner where a work stoppage is in progress. That includes
NAFTA workers. When the baseball strike ended in 1995, some MLB
players whose visas had expired during the strike had to scramble
to get new visas in time--this was an issue because the strike
had been officially ongoing for the entire offseason, when
normally visa issues would have been handled. Some MLB from
the Dominican Republic, etc, were late reporting to camp as a
result.

You cannot replace one foreigner on a visa with another foreigner
on a visa when a strike/lockout is in progress. The replacement
workers have to be US citizens or green card holders, period.


I don't see a Liberal government facilitating the use of
replacement workers, but maybe I am mistaken. And I don't see
Congress in the US facilitating this either, in the current immigration climate.

That's two core, long-term, NHL teams, including by far the most
successful NHL franchise ever. Not a trivial loss.


But what would the Canadian teams use? Canadians? Would they be
allowed to cross the border to play road games in the US?

mike eisler

Assuming the Canadian teams were allowed to use replacements, they'd
use Canadians or whatever nationalities the law allows. As for
crossing the border, if not allowed to cross the border, then the
regular season would have to be played without games between teams of
each country. The players would be unpaid to play in the playoffs;
presumably labor laws don't prohibit people from voluntarily picking
up sticks and wearing skates on sheets of ice in front of crowds of
people.

There are, in fact, cir***stances in which US immigration law prevents
a foreigner from working in the US, even if the work is to be done
for free. US immigration law is very tough. If the scenario is as
difficult as you describe, I do not see the NHL trying to play.