on 8(a) (5) states that It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer - to refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees, subject to the provisions of section 9(a) of the law. The National Labor Relations Board enforces the law by policing unfair labor practices committed by either labor or management. The Board also reviews questions concerning what issues are subject to negotiation under the law. The two most common allegations of unfair labor practices are that the employer has disciplined or discharged players for engaging in union activities and that the employer has refused to bargain in good faith.The collective bargaining agreements reached in professional sports are not industrywide. Rather, there is a separate one for baseball, football, etc. This makes bargaining in sports unique from other unions. Also, the clubs bargain as a group with unions over certain aspects of wages, hours and working conditions. However, the most important issue, individual salary, is negotiated between the club and player. The National Labor Relations Act seeks to promote collective bargaining to resolve employer and employee concerns. Because many agreements between labor and management sometimes affect and/or restrain competition under the context of the Sherman Act of 1890, a judicially created labor exemption, has been created. This exemption attempts to accommodate inherent conflicts between national labor and antitrust policy and to protect labor-management agreements over issues of central importance to labor from antitrust interdiction.The primary purpose of antitrust legislation is to promote freedom of competition in the marketplace, while the primary purpose of the National Labor Relations Act is to promote collective bargaining and to protect certain union or concerted employee activities. Unions, however, are anticompetitive and the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that a central purpose of t...
