PIAA Pushes It To and Through the NLRB

[JRutledge]

The more and more I hear about these stories about what organization you can or cannot belong to because of some stated policy just gives me the appreciation to realize how well off we are here. No one decides who and what we can work for or what organization we belong to. Our state has some issues overall, but telling us where to be is not one of them. In football I belong to 3 organizations. In basketball I belong to 3 organizations as well (some are the same organization but different divisions for a particular sport. No one can tell us if or what we can belong to. Even association membership is not required, but highly recommended. Either way, I like the freedom.

Peace

[Player989random]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

The more and more I hear about these stories about what organization you can or cannot belong to because of some stated policy just gives me the appreciation to realize how well off we are here. No one decides who and what we can work for or what organization we belong to. Our state has some issues overall, but telling us where to be is not one of them. In football I belong to 3 organizations. In basketball I belong to 3 organizations as well (some are the same organization but different divisions for a particular sport. No one can tell us if or what we can belong to. Even association membership is not required, but highly recommended. Either way, I like the freedom.

Peace

Well every sport isn't locked in political gridlock. Football simply has a power-hungry individual at the reins, and the basketball groups in NoVA are fighting for dominance.

While you can't work for another football group, you can get sent out west to help one out. Why? Because the boss made the decision instead of you(I wonder why no one wants to join ). My basketball association doesn't care if you work for the rival group C, but if C finds out, they pull your schedule.

Believe it or not the other sports are cool with multiple memberships, but soccer referees have always been a tight-knit group in my experience and the baseball umpires have a monopoly from Stafford, VA to Baltimore, MD. Smaller sports like hockey and lacrosse simply can't afford a turf war.

[chapmaja]

I'm glad I don't work down there.

In Michigan it is clear we are independent contractors and we are allowed to be members of as many officiating associations as we want.

The hassle sometimes comes in for assigners. Michigan's Right to Work Law (Aka right to steal services from the union), actually does impact assigners and officials.)

Assigners can require an official to be a member of an officials association, but can't require an official to be a member of a specific officials association. If we (I do assign two sports), violate these rules we can be sued (it happened to an assigner last year) and be barred from assigning MHSAA contests as all assigners are required to be registered with the MHSAA.