was that Stern has been saying “Hey, we opened the books!” which was true to some degree, but they didn’t show everything.

Link.

He told Francesa that the league turned over certified annual reports, U.S. tax returns, financial statements and other documents to the union. "We invited [the union] to sit down with our accountants, but they never did," Stern said. All true. Not mentioned: The union’s claim that the league has refused to turn over other documents – team sales prospectuses, franchise valuation reports and information on side businesses related to the operation of NBA teams. The league may well be within its rights to withhold this stuff — it has argued as such — but the average fan would conclude from this interview that the league has turned over everything the union wants. That is not accurate.

I think it’s fair to say that the league/owners have been hesitant to fling open all the books and let players look at everything.

They hide behind BRI and formulas, then don’t account for all the tax benefits in their calculations.

They are losing money not so much because they overpaid for players as because they overpaid for franchises. And they want the players to bail them out!

But are the people working low paying and low hour jobs less deserving of sympathy when they lose hours? Typically, those are the people that need the money the most.

Those pay checks could be the difference between a paid electricity bill and an unpaid one…

9.25 an hour is what the author has…and looks like it would have to be a supplemental income type of deal, not enough to feed a family.

…at both the RG and JWF are retirees supplementing social security benefits. A majority of the concessions workers are NPO volunteers raising money for their funds.

The turnover rate for hourly employees is astronomical due to the seasonality and the fact that most of these people only wor on actual game days (that’s 44 days at RG and 20 at JWF) which makes management dependent on retirees and NPOs.

The lockout sucks and people are losing money, but no one is going to lose their home over this unless they were already in danger of it happening regardless.

We’ve had a house cleaner come to our house every other week since I can remember. We paid that person $75 each time. Sometimes, however, we’d go on vacation. Or have house guests that interrupted our schedule, or someone would be sick and it would have just been inconvenient to have our house cleaned that day. Whatever the reason, we’d cancel every once in a while.

Some would say that is the nature of the business if you are a house cleaner.

But my mom would never let someone trying to make ends meet as a house cleaner (for the past few years it has been a husband/wife pair with two kids) miss a paycheck because we decided to go on vacation. So a check was always there for $75 every two weeks no matter what.

I’ll always remember that lesson. It will be a very long time before I can afford my own house cleaner, but trust me, they’ll get paid like clock work.

The Rose Garden is full of great employees that actually depend on that money. And it would be awesome if the league stepped up to the plate and paid these people even though the players and owners have decided to take a vacation and don’t “need” them. From what I hear, Paul Allen (and his deep pockets) is one of the major advocates for continuing the lockout until the owners get what they want. Maybe he should be paying the popcorn vendors in the meantime.

At least that is what I’d do if I was in charge.

you have to post w/ the creepiest one?

For those who are applying to work at a retail chain, I’d strongly suggest avoiding non-union stores such as Target, K-Mart, Walmart, et cetera.