Replacement officials will work the opening week of the NFL's regular season, the league announced Wednesday. Yahoo! Sports obtained a copy of a memo that Ray Anderson, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, sent to update all 32 teams on the lockout of the NFL Referees Association.
Negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement have stalled since the early June lockout.
The memo reads:
This memo will review our
plans for the replacement officials in the regular season and the status of our
labor negotiations with the NFL Referees Association, the labor union that
represents our game officials.
Regular Season Planning - In light of the current state of negotiations, we
will have replacement crews on the field when the regular season begins. The
replacements have undergone extensive training and evaluation, and have shown
steady improvement during the preseason. We will continue the training with
each crew and they will work as much of the regular season as necessary. The
replacement officials are dedicated and enthusiastic, have worked very hard to
improve, and have persevered despite the attacks on their qualifications and
performance. We are all grateful for their service to the NFL.
As part of our effort to support the replacement officials, we will employ
procedures similar to those in effect in the postseason. We will have an
officiating supervisor from our staff in the replay booth at each game whose
job will be to help ensure correct penalty enforcement, administration of rules
not involving fouls, operation of the game and play clocks, and game
administration. The supervisor will be able to communicate directly with the
alternate official on the sidelines. The supervisor will not be involved in
either the instant replay system or any judgment made by the officials on the
field. As in all games, the final decision will be made by the referee on the
field and no decision will be revisited or changed once the ball has been
snapped for the next play.
Status of Negotiations - Our negotiations with the game officials' union remain
deadlocked. Although we continue to be in touch with federal mediators, and are
prepared to resume negotiations at any time, no discussions are currently
scheduled.
We remain apart on economic issues, as well as on fundamental non-economic
matters. From an economic perspective, the differences involve both pay and
pension. Our last offer, tendered to the union prior to the beginning of the
lockout, would have given officials significant annual pay increases.
Nonetheless, there remains a considerable gap between us. The officials
continue to insist on larger overall pay increases, as well as greater amounts
devoted for non-game compensation, than we consider reasonable in light of
economic developments of recent years and compensation trends for other league
and team employees.
We also continue to differ on the appropriate retirement arrangements for the
officials. The NFLRA seeks both to retain the current defined benefit pension
plan for the current staff for at least another 5-6 years, and to increase the
amount of the defined benefit. We have proposed to freeze the defined benefit
plan (preserving all vested benefits for all officials) and replace it with a
defined contribution/401(k) arrangement - the same arrangement that is in place
for all other league employees and which 13 clubs have adopted. We have offered
a defined contribution that would average $20,000 per year, while the
officials' union has proposed a substantially higher amount.
Apart from the economic issues, we have a substantial difference on operational
issues that directly affect the quality of officiating. One of our key goals in
this negotiation is to enhance our ability to recruit, train, and replace
officials who are not performing adequately. We believe that officials should
be evaluated and performance issues addressed in the same way as players,
coaches, club management and league staff. We have proposed several steps to
accomplish this, including having a number of full-time officials and expanding
the overall number of officials. We think these steps, along with improvements
in training and evaluation, an increased emphasis on consistency, and an
enhanced ability to bring in new officials when necessary, will lead to
long-term improvements in officiating. As part of this effort, we will work
with our game officials and each of you to identify ways in which we can
support our game officials, offer them better training, more technology and
additional resources, and thereby improve our game for years to come
.