Owners, NFL players to open labor talks within month

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/feedarticle/8511260

Reuters, Saturday May 16 2009

* Union has warned lockout by owners may occur in 2011
* League owners want to cut player salary costs
* Owners won't open financial books as union wants
By Ben Klayman
CHICAGO, May 16 (Reuters) - The National Football League and its players will open talks in the next month for a new labor agreement in hopes of avoiding a work stoppage in America's most popular sport, officials said on Saturday.
League owners voted unanimously last year to end their agreement with the NFL Players Association two years early in a move to cut salary costs. The existing deal now ends after the 2010 season.
"There isn't a day where I won't pray for labor peace," NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith said on Saturday at a sports law conference in Chicago.
"This is a game that has grown dramatically because of that labor peace," he added. "But at the same time, our players understand that there may also be a war on the forefront."
Smith was part of a panel that included the heads of the four major U.S. sports' unions, while executives from the management ranks spoke on a separate panel.
Dennis Curran, the NFL's senior vice president in charge of labor litigation and policy, told the conference the owners' bargaining committee would open talks with Smith in the next month. Smith said talks would begin soon.
Smith, a Washington attorney, was elected in March to a three-year term as head of the union, replacing longtime leader Gene Upshaw, who died last August of pancreatic cancer.

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