Throughout the summer of 2011, it was a dark, dark time for the NFL as the NFL Players Association and the owners were at odds, leading to a five-month lockout.
That lockout was due to a dispute in the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations that had owners and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell calling for a cutback in salaries and benefits under the salary cap system, stating to the NFLPA at the time that they’d lock out the players if there was no agreement by March 1, 2011.
Of course, the lockout commenced on March 7, 2011 after a one-week extension of the CBA. While in a lockout, the was a collusion case filed by the NFLPA against owners and the league regarding free agency spending that offseason, while the NFLPA also announced during that time that it was no longer a union.
Eventually, the lockout ended in late July of that year, leading to a week-long negotiation for a new CBA between the NFLPA and the owners. One team didn’t want to go forward with the CBA agreement as presented that summer. That was the Pittsburgh Steelers.
It raised some eyebrows as the Steelers were the lone “no” vote out of 32 teams. It was largely unanimous within the Steelers’ organization, too. According to former Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch, the Steelers were so confident and comfortable in being nearly a unanimous no in large part due to his job explaining the CBA terms as the team’s NFLPA representative.
Appearing on the Brian Hess Show recently, Batch recalled that summer in lockout and what eventually led to the Steelers’ no vote.
“We knew we were going into an un-capped year, and we knew we were going to get locked out. I was just honest, open and transparent with all of my players, like ‘you’re going to hear this information from me, not what you’re going to hear on the news.’ I remember we went through and the deal was getting ready to be ratified, and I remember we were sitting there in Latrobe and we had a team meeting and from there I presented the whole collective bargaining agreement,” Batch said on the Hess show, according to video the show’s YouTube page. “You could see everybody in the room like, ‘man, this kinda doesn’t make any sense.’
“The vote was ultimately 31-1, and we voted no, and at that point it was like a landslide, 85-5 or something like that, something ridiculous. I knew that I was open and honest, and if I lost my job [as an NFL QB] because of it, I knew that my integrity would not be questioned by any player in this particular room,” Batch added. “All these years later as people were finding out things that were in the collective bargaining agreement that they did not know, I could sit there and say ‘my guys knew.'”
Though Batch was worried about his job due to the Steelers’ decision to vote no against that amended CBA on August 5, 2011, Steelers owner Art Rooney II never let the business side of things in negotiations trickle over into what actually transpired on the field.
For that, Batch was quite appreciative. It’s not as though Rooney wasn’t aligned with the players, either. Rooney had been critical of Goodell in 2010, so when the team made the stance against the commissioner, his increased power and overseeing fines and suspensions and him seemingly targeting Pittsburgh’s James Harrison that season, it wasn’t all that surprising.
As Batch pointed out, too, once players around the league started learning more and more about the CBA after they had already agreed to its terms, players started to publicly regret coming to an agreement on the CBA. Former Steeler safety Ryan Clark stated publicly at the time that the power Goodell would hold from the new CBA was a deal-breaker for the Steelers.
Obviously, the Steelers were alone in that thinking thanks to the 31-1 vote as the players got back on the field and ended the longest lockout in league history.
But over the next 10 years, there were plenty of issues and arguments with that particular CBA. The Steelers were ahead of the problems though with the “no” vote. That’s a testament to Batch, who did his job as the Steelers’ NFLPA rep to the best of his ability, knowing his role and coming through in the moment for his teammates.
He should be proud of that. He was a straight shooter and took care of his guys. It worked out in the end.
Batch went on to play two more seasons with the Steelers after the tumultuous CBA negotiations with the owners in the summer of 2011. In fact, Batch even came off the bench that season for Pittsburgh, playing in four games, starting one, going 1-0 as the starter while throwing for 208 yards on 15-of-22 passing attempts in a Week 15 win over the then-St. Louis Rams, 27-0, at Heinz Field.
