NFL Cheerleaders: Exploited Labor?

Byrdbrain

Byrdbrain

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jose melendez said:
 
I'm not saying that cheerleaders are coal miners, but the "if they don't like it, don't do it" argument is, as I said before, the basic argument against every labor protection there is.  It's straight up libertareanism--people should enter into whatever contracts they want.  I'm generally unsympathetic to that argument, and I'm particularly unsympathetic from the NFL, who, as mentioned before, enjoys all kinds of legal exemptions and publci subsidies.
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I am generally very sympathetic to that argument and would be even more so in a case like this where it it a part time job that is typically done for reasons other than money. However I am 100% with you on the bolded part.
 
 
Oh and caesar is loopy.
 
Devizier

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Simple solution: how much - revenue wise - are the cheerleaders worth to NFL franchises? How about getting paid a share, 58% let's say of that determined worth?
 
SumnerH

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Devizier said:
Simple solution: how much - revenue wise - are the cheerleaders worth to NFL franchises? How about getting paid a share, 58% let's say of that determined worth?
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They are not investors, they're employees. 
 
luckiestman

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My personal take is that cheerleaders are a zero value added for me at a game in terms of how much I'd be willing to pay, but if you are going to have employees I think you should treat them well. If the owners can collectively bargain at one end to cap player salaries, I think minimum salaries should exist for cheerleaders.  
 
C

caesarbear

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Jan 28, 2007
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Deathofthebambino said:
What the fuck are you talking about?
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What do you need explained? Banned says cheerleading is about ancillary benefits, but then says these women don't need it, He cites coal miners, a low education, hard working, low opportunity job as a means to infer that people take such jobs for need. But how many of those kinds of jobs are available to women? If the work available to you can't provide you with a living wage, then isn't an ancillary job necessary?
 
crystalline

crystalline

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Devizier said:
Simple solution: how much - revenue wise - are the cheerleaders worth to NFL franchises? How about getting paid a share, 58% let's say of that determined worth?
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As sumner says: you don't get paid what you're worth, you get what you have the leverage to negotiate for.

In economic markets only monopolists get paid the value of their goods or services. With competition, supply and demand set the price. Here there are a few thousand women who would love to be an NFL cheerleader and have the qualifications to do so. Therefore the team can pay peanuts because the supply of cheerleaders vastly outnumbers the demand of job slots (even if the presence of cheerleaders is worth millions to each team). In some Utopian world labor laws would regulate the labor market so workers got paid what they were worth. The real world makes that difficult.
 
jose melendez

jose melendez

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Papelbon's Poutine said:
 
This will now be the fourth (read: 4th) time that I will state they should get more than they are getting. I don't, however, share the outrage that many here have because I don't view this a job someone takes for a living wage, nor should they expect it to be. And you're still ignoring that it's not the NFL team that is setting these practices or wages. There isn't a guy sitting in an office at Gillette that is monitoring how many calendars these girls have sold or weighing them in on a weekly basis. The contract this out, just like they do the security staff, the concession workers, the private suite workers and pretty much every else working at the stadium on game day. It's the production company - as noted in the Bills article - that are the ones pulling this shit and playing fast and loose with labor laws. The girls are suing the team because they have money in their pockets and will hopefully settle to avoid the bad publicity. Let's use a little bit of common sense and think about it - if the team was the one responsible for this, do you think their lawyers would allow them to carry on questionably legal practices? 
 
Now, if you want to argue that teams should pay a bit more attention to how it all trickles down, sure. I think there's a counter argument there, but I'm not going to even touch it. In the meantime, I'm sorry, I disagree that this is another case of the big bad NFL owner being greedy. 
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And for the fourth (5th?) time.  I'm not saying they should be getting a living wage for it.  I'm saying that they're employer shouldn't be playing fast and loose with labor laws.  I'm also saying big corporations are absolutely morally responsible for who they contract out to, and should be held responsible in the court of public opinion for giving a  contract to people who treat workers like shit. 
 
If H&M, as I said before, gives a contract to a sweat shop that uses child labor, then I have no interest in H&M pleading ignorant. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, but they were a beneficiary of the exploitative arrangement so fix it.  It goes without saying that the cheerleaders are not the equivalent of child laborers, coal miners etc., but the argument you and others are making for why the teams aren't responsible is literally the same argument made to support every company who hires abusive contractors.
 
Edit:  And as always, I see all "free labor market" arguments in this case as pretty much completely invalid from anyone affiliated with the NFL, as the NFL has nothing even vaguely resembling a free labor market.  Players salaries are artificially suppressed (draft, salary cap, etc.) As an outsider, one can make that argument without hypocracy, but there ain't an owner in the NFL who can argue that the market should set wages.
 
Devizier

Devizier

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crystalline said:
As sumner says: you don't get paid what you're worth, you get what you have the leverage to negotiate for.
 
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You can hold the economics lesson, because I don't care. Obviously the cheerleaders won't get shit unless they unionize and negotiate a CBA, which is what my point was jokingly referring to.
 
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