[lbo-talk] work stoppage

[Dennis Claxton]

I was watching Ted Turner's cable channel last night to see if Barry 
Bonds would hit a home run.  The broadcasters were chatting a lot 
about the meaning of Bonds breaking one of the most important records 
in sports and one of them said how important another record chase in 
1998 had been in getting fans back into the game after the "work 
stoppage" in 1994.

I'd never noticed this term used before but I googled "work stoppage" 
and "baseball" just now and it's all over the place.  ESPN even has a 
page called Work Stoppage 101.  It hasn't completely displaced 
"strike" but I wonder how it came to be used at all.

The baseball players union is one of the best unions in the history 
of the U.S.  It was built in the '60s and '70s largely by a career 
labor guy from the Bronx, Marvin Miller,  who was trained as an 
economist.  It's a great organizing story.  In the beginning the 
players were so clueless they wanted to appoint Richard Nixon 
as  Miller's general counsel.