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Trust and Antitrust: The Failure of the First National Hockey League Players’ Association, 1957–1958 J. Andrew Ross Based on National Hockey League club and league correspondence, congressional transcripts, newspapers, and government documents, this essay examines the first attempt to organize a National Hockey League Players’ Association. For just over a year, the NHLPA struggled to overcome the resistance of NHL owners, the uncertainty of its own members, and the confusing legal environment created by overlapping transnational, interstate, and inter-provincial jurisdictions. These issues make the NHLPA a compelling case study of the way in which the borders between business and sport began to shift in the 1950s, a time when new forces—technological (television), legal (congressional investigation and judicial decisions), and social (player activism)—were preparing the way for the struggle for free agency. In its Federal Baseball Club v. National League decision (1922), the United States Supreme Court concluded that professional baseball was exempt from antitrust legislation because it was not engaged in interstate commerce.1 This decision and its implicit extension to other ―major league‖ North American sports—football, basketball, and hockey—has attracted the attention of many scholars who have noted its profound effects on the 1 Federal Base Ball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs et al., 259 U.S. 200 (1922). The argument was that baseball was not interstate commerce, a requirement for the application of the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). For a recent commentary on this decision, see Samuel A. Alito, Jr., ―The Origins of the Baseball Antitrust Exemption: Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs,‖ Baseball Research Journal 38 (Fall 2009): 86. J. Andrew Ross <[email protected]> is a postdoctoral fellow in the Historical Data Research Unit at the University of Guelph. © Business History Conference, 2010. All rights reserved. URL: http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEHonline/2010/ross.pdf J. Andrew Ross // The First NHL Players’ Association 2 organization of major league sports markets.2 Others have made general analyses of the impact of so-called cultural formations on the ability of business to control labor.3 This essay aims to analyze the ambiguous status of a major league sport—hockey—as one such cultural formation. Using National Hockey League (NHL) club and league correspondence, congressional transcripts, and court documents, I examine the 1957 attempt to organize a National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA). For just over a year, the association struggled to overcome the resistance of NHL owners, the uncertainty of its own members, and a confusing legal environment created by overlapping transnational, interstate, and inter-provincial jurisdictions. These issues and others make the NHLPA story a compelling case study of the way in which the borders between business and sport began to shift in the 1950s, a time when new forces—technological (television), legal (congressional investigation and judicial decisions), and social (player activism)—were laying the ground for the 1970s period of free agency that changed the face of major league sports.4 The Rise and Fall of the NHLPA On February 11, 1957, after months of secret organizing, the National Hockey League Players’ Association announced its existence.5 In forming the association, the NHL players had been inspired by increasing activism among professional athletes in the 1950s, which itself came at the end of a longer trend of union membership growth in the wider North American 2 Gary R. Roberts, ―Professional Sports and the Antitrust Laws,‖ in The Business of Professional Sports, ed. Paul Staudohar and James A. Mangan (Urbana, Ill., 1991), 135-51. 3 See the discussion in Naomi Lamoreaux, Daniel G. Raff, and Peter Temin, ―Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History,‖ American Historical Review 108 (April 2003): 419-20. 4 Staudohar writes that labor issues were ―not important‖ until the 1970s. Paul D. Staudohar, Playing for Dollars: Labor Relations and the Sports Business (Ithaca, N.Y., 1996), 3. 5 ―See TV as Spark for NHL Players’ Union,‖ Toronto Daily Star, 12 Feb. 1957, p. 12. The meeting had representatives from all six clubs (including two from New York) and was also attended by James P. Durante, a Lewis & Mound associate. Four club representatives brought the $100 membership fees from each player with the other two to send them in later. Officers were elected, a banker and lawyer appointed, and resolutions passed on pension premium reduction, money from TV and radio to increase pensions, and reimbursement of traveling expenses for the club representatives. Summary of Evidence of Milton N. Mound, OLRB hearing, 23 Nov. 1957, Archives of Ontario [hereafter, AO], F223-3-1-98 (Conn Smythe fonds). N.B.: This source and the Summary of Evidence of Tod Sloane [sic] (note 28, below) are not official OLRB reports, but rather the notes of Maple Leaf Gardens lawyer Ian Johnston taken at the time of their testimony and should be treated with due care. J. Andrew Ross // The First NHL Players’ Association 3 economy. 6 The late arrival of athlete laborers to unionization resulted primarily from the special status of the sports industry. The Federal Baseball decision had essentially provided a ―cultural‖ exemption for baseball, and that had been implicitly extended to other ―major league‖ sports—football, basketball, and hockey. Leagues in these sports were free to enter into cartel arrangements, exert monopoly and monopsony power, and engage in other anticompetitive activities. This included great latitude in the control of laborers, who continued to be seen through a cultural prism—as ―players‖ of a ―game‖—and not an industrial one—as workers in an industry. This cultural formation came under scrutiny only after the Second World War, when athletes’ questions about the beneficence of the paternalistic labor-management relationship and new technologies like television brought pressure for change. But as long as the ambiguous identity of the leagues and clubs remained just that—ambiguous as to whether or not they were really businesses at all—then the identity of sports labor organizations as unions was also called into question, and the drive to organize athletes for effective collective bargaining would struggle. The formation of the NHLPA followed the creation of the Major League Ball Players Association (MLBPA) (1953), the National Basketball Players Association (1954), and a concurrent drive to organize a National Football League Players Association. 7 The hockey players looked to baseball as their model. In August 1956 the MLBPA had renegotiated the pension agreement, convincing the owners to have it fully funded from All- Star Game and World Series revenues.8 Since the NHL had just signed its own national contract with CBS-TV, NHL players wanted to see if they also 6 In a larger context the athlete organizational activities took place during the waning of the so-called golden age of the American labor movement, a period from 1936 to 1956 in which union membership grew (in Canada as well) to record numbers as a result of the economic exigencies of the Depression and the Second World War. From 1956, union membership began to drop in both countries. For a comparative discussion of Canadian and American unionization in this period, see Seymour Martin Lipset and Noah M. Meltz, The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More than Canadians Do, but Join Much Less (Ithaca, N.Y., 2004), 41-44. 7 The basketball players threatened to unionize in January 1957 but agreed to hold off for three months until the NBA president could institute a grievance mechanism. They were not formally recognized as a bargaining unit until 1964. ―NBPA History,‖ National Basketball Players Association, viewed 23 March 2006. URL: http://www.nbpa.com/history.php. The football owners refused to recog- nize the football association until NFL Commissioner Bert Bell recommended it under the threat of a $4.2 million dollar lawsuit from the players’ association. David Condon, ―Pro Football Minimum Wage Deal Approved,‖ Chicago Daily Tribune, 3 Dec. 1957, C2. 8 ―Player Pensions Rise in Baseball,‖ New York Times, 21 Aug. 1956, p. 23. J. Andrew Ross // The First NHL Players’ Association 4 could get a share. 9 Ted Lindsay of the Detroit Red Wings spoke to Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller, who introduced him to the MLBPA’s agents, the Lewis & Mound law firm of New York. With Norman Lewis involved with baseball, partner Milton Mound took up the case, noting that hockey players had ―substantial grievances‖ and should have ―the same achievements which have been announced in connection with base- ball.‖10 At the February 1957 announcement of the NHLPA, Lindsay, the organization’s new president, emphasized that the group was not out ―to make trouble‖ and had no complaints like those of professional football players.11 He was emphatic that the group was not a trade union and therefore would not negotiate individual salaries; rather, it had been formed simply to request information about the player pension scheme and to negotiate certain changes to the Standard Player’s Contract.12 Aside from the pension, the players wanted: provision for $35 salaries during training and a meal allowance of $10 per day; a no-trade clause after six years of service; remuneration for and restrictions on exhibition games; a 9 ―CBS to Televise Ten NHL Games; Dates Announced,‖ Globe and Mail (Toronto), 3 July 1956, p. 22. Lindsay was in the plastics business with Red Wings teammates Marty Pavelich and Gordie Howe. David Cruise and Allison Griffiths, Net Worth: Exploding the Myths of Pro Hockey (Toronto, 1991), 76. Many NHL players had off-season business interests. 10 Summary of Evidence of Milton N.