256
Stevens, J., dissenting
practice because, unlike employees in most industries, they want their compensation to be determined by the forces of the free market rather than by the process of collective bargaining. Thus, although the majority professes an inability to understand anything special about professional sports that should affect the framework of labor negotiations, ante, at 248-249, in this business it is the employers, not the employees, who seek to impose a noncompetitive uniform wage on a segment of the market and to put an end to competitive wage negotiations.
Second, respondents concede that the employers imposed the wage restraint to force owners to comply with league-wide rules that limit the number of players that may serve on a team, not to facilitate a stalled bargaining process, or to revisit any issue previously subjected to bargaining. Brief for Respondents 4. The employers could have confronted the culprits directly by stepping up enforcement of roster limits. They instead chose to address the problem by unilaterally preventing players from individually competing in the labor market.
Third, although the majority asserts that the "club owners had bargained with the players' union over a wage issue until they reached impasse," ante, at 234, that hardly constitutes a complete description of what transpired. When the employers' representative advised the union that they proposed to pay the players a uniform wage determined by the owners, the union promptly and unequivocally responded that their proposal was inconsistent with the "principle" of individual salary negotiation that had been accepted in the past and that predated collective bargaining.4 The so-called "bar-salary of $1,000 per week. Plaintiffs' Exhibits at 8, 9, 15 & 28." 782 F. Supp. 125, 138 (DC 1991).
4 In a memorandum summarizing his meeting with the union representative, the owners representative stated, in part: "Gene [Upshaw] indicated he fully understood the developmental squad but could not agree to any arrangement that eliminated the right of any
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