J.C. Tretter
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Yeah, from a union perspective, we're negotiating for the same things that any union is. Better wages, better benefits, better working conditions. But there is a level of control that's always being fought after. And the league, there's a piece of them that just wants to make sure that we know that they have control of us. From individual teams, like you said, we are just workers.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
And some coaches and some bosses are better at working with their employees. about different changes that need to be made, whether it's scheduling, whether it's technique, whether it's how they operate. And some aren't good. I sometimes get frustrated when we're defined too much as just players because I think it takes us away out of the real world and puts us in the football world.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
And we are workers and we're fighting for the same things. And I think that's one of our struggles as a union because of our short lifespan where somebody comes into a union job And they can make sacrifices and bargain a certain way because they have the opportunity to be in that job for 30, 40 years. So sacrificing for today, they're going to see the fruits of that labor.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
That's not always true for us. So the sacrifices one group makes, they're probably never seeing the benefits of those sacrifices. But when it comes to the negotiating, there is a pie out there. And I think your job as an individual or as a union is to get the biggest share possible. I have to say, you can really sound like an old-fashioned union agitator when you need to.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
The top three teams... all have brand new facilities. When we talk about facilities, I think sometimes the fans don't understand how different franchises work. So everybody thinks of their stadium. So like the Rams and the Chargers were poorly ranked. And you heard a lot of questions of like, whoa, SoFi Stadium's brand new. They put billions of dollars into it. How is it poorly ranked?
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
That's not where players spend their days. That's where they play for one day a week. But their facilities are usually located elsewhere.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Yeah, if teams do get new facilities, right? Like some of these teams have had old facilities forever. So who are the top three teams in the Players Union survey? Top three teams are Minnesota was number one, Miami was number two, and Las Vegas was number three.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
No, and that's the thing. Like, having a star quarterback like Patrick Mahomes is the ultimate deodorant, whether it's talent around him or facilities or coaching. He's going to make everybody look good because he is that freaking good as a quarterback. But that doesn't mean the offerings shouldn't be up to snuff. It shouldn't be, hey...
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
come here to play with Patrick Mahomes and potentially win a Super Bowl, but also the facilities are going to be old and dilapidated and you have to deal with that, that shouldn't be the trade-off. Just pay for better facilities. If you're making so much money, the idea of making it a choice of one or the other when you could just provide both doesn't make much sense to me.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
We ask the players, do they think their owner is willing to invest money to make the facilities better? And I think the teams at the bottom, that number tracked being down there. You don't have to knock down walls, but it's, are you willing to invest money the money necessary to make the changes necessary to fix the issues you have.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Like for Cincinnati, to rewire the locker room to make sure there's outlets there is not that costly. For Washington, there was complaints that there's poor drainage in the showers. So the guys are literally standing in The water that's been run off from the guy next to him who's showering the dirt and the blood and the sweat like these aren't knock the walls down and build a new facility.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Let's get a plumber in there and fix it.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
And when they're making these decisions about where they're going to spend potentially the rest of their career, they should know what they're getting into. I talked to a lot of guys as we did this survey, and I said like, hey, you know, your team's one of the worst graded teams. Did you know that before you signed? And they're like, no, and I got here and now I feel trapped.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
The quality of care is poor and the facilities are poor and I'm stuck here.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Yeah, and again, most of our guys aren't making that. So you start looking for differentiators. And those guys, those minimum salary guys are the lunch pail hard hat guys of your team, the special teams guys, the offensive linemen, the backups that make the team work. Those guys are looking at it and saying, like, hold on, I'm going to get the same dollar amount from every team.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
What are the other variables I can look at? And before it was, what do I think of the area, like the city, like how close is it to my family? And now it's like, hold on, I'm not going to go to a team that has weight room floors peeling up and charges me for dinner. I'm going to go someplace else.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
My wife, my mom, my sister, my dad, they didn't come to games to tailgate and booze it up and cheer for the Cleveland Browns. They came to the game to make sure I walked off the field at the end. That, again, is J.C. Tretter, former president of the NFL Players Union. I understand the guys on the field are making a lot of money. Even the guys making minimum salary are making a lot of money.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
The risk they are taking, though, is substantial. And the damage they are receiving is substantial. And parents and kids and wives and siblings are there worried about their well-being. And the idea...
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
That the guys out there making the owner hundreds of millions to billions of dollars for what they're doing on the field while taking all of the risk physically, the idea that their wife and newborn baby are sitting on the grimy floor of a public restroom breastfeeding is just preposterous to me. 18 of the teams offer family rooms, 14 don't.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
And the teams that don't, like, where is that wife supposed to go? What's your prediction for, let's say, two years from now? How many of those 14 will offer it? We've heard from some teams being like, ah, you know, we have an older stadium. There's no room for it. But everybody has suites. You know, like in the end, it comes down to a choice.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
So how many games did your family attend when you were playing for Cleveland? Yeah, they would be at almost every home game. And in the end, once I got my third contract, me and two other teammates went in on a suite. Like we bought our own suite. We all had young kids from two and under, and we didn't want them out in the cold. So we said like, we'll pay the money and buy a suite.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
How much did you have to pay? $150,000.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
We want to live in a world where we're giving out 32 A-pluses for all the teams. That, again, is JC Treader. And when we went into this year one, I told the staff when we started it, like, if all that comes from this is four teams start giving dinner to those players, it's a win.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Yeah, we've heard from about 12 to 15 teams who have reached out to us just to say, like, what can we do better? Can you give us more information? What changes would make us better? I give credit to like Arthur Blank, who's the owner for the Atlanta Falcons. There was an article written where he said he pulled his president and GM and head coach aside.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
and told them one, if this comes out again, they absolutely cannot be graded as low as they were before. And also that they need to start being more proactive and it shouldn't take this type of thing to create the change. Like they should be as leaders of the organization, be looking around corners and realizing where they're weak and where they need to improve.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
I don't know Arthur well from people who do. It seems like it's not just lip service and that he's going to act on those words.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Those are the things you want to see. Like, don't get defensive about this. That's not what we're hoping for. We're hoping that people see like, okay, this team's providing this, this, and this. Maybe we should provide that too. Because in the end, as adversarials, sometimes we are. The teams need the players and the players need the franchises. Do you plan to do the survey every year? Yes.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
And year two is going to be more important than year one because year one, owners could claim ignorance. I think more will claim ignorance than should claim ignorance. And for some of it, I'm sure they didn't know. Like, I don't think many owners are hanging out in the hot tubs with the guys.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
And if they do, that's a story of itself that we should be diving into of why are they hanging out in the hot tubs with the guys. But year two, now that this is out there, If some things aren't changed, you can't claim ignorance anymore.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
The teams are called franchises, and I think that's a connector outside of our industry. I think there is an expectation that everything is equal in the NFL. And I think everybody would think it's equal at Starbucks and equal at Chick-fil-A and equal at McDonald's. And you go to a franchise, the rules and the treatment of the workers are the same. And I think we know that's not true.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
And if you're a worker, I think it would be valuable to know the treatment you will receive if you decide to work at one franchise versus another. And I also think if you're the overall company...
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
It would be interesting to see how your franchises who are carrying your name and dictating your brand image, how they treat their workers and how they treat their customers and how that varies across different franchise operators.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
I went to Cornell University and studied industrial labor relations. That's a pretty typical college and major for an NFL prospect, yes? Yeah, it's not the normal pipeline to the pros. And I think leading into my election, it probably helped substantially because there's not many Cornell ILR grads walking around the NFL.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
And I was kind of looking for some new projects to do. So I had a ton of time on my hands. And it was like, I'm going to take a stab at this.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Yeah, I was shocked at the response rate. Describe how many players got the survey and how many responded. So we have 2,200 active players and we had 1,300 fill out the survey, which is about 60%. As we saw the numbers start pouring in, it was like, oh man, we have to do something here. It's going to be like report cards.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
You had to ask somewhat qualitative, but also quantitative questions to try to figure out how to compare these franchises. Give an example or two. You know, rate your locker room one to five, but then also what would you change about your locker room? What's missing in your locker room?
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
I mean, I would never have thought to ask, are there rats in your locker room? Are there physical rats in your locker room? And yet that comes out in the survey because there were. In Jacksonville, we should say. Not everywhere. Right. You have to allow the players to fill you in with what's bothering them.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Like there's one team that doesn't have outlets in their lockers where they can't charge their devices. Okay. Who is that? Cincinnati. Okay. The survey was conducted online with guaranteed anonymity. In our business, you're so on razor's edge of being cut and losing your job.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
The idea that these owners actually think players can walk into their office and tell them, like, hey, I think you're being cheap and you're not spending enough money on us, and there wouldn't be any retribution— is a little crazy to me.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
There are some players that do, and a lot of it's the star quarterbacks who are untouchable or players that have guaranteed money and feel like they're safe and they can go in there and they can try to drive change for their teammates because they're a little more protected than the average player. But that was one of the reasons about making it anonymous.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
It was allowing everybody to voice what they've seen without fear of retribution. The survey covered eight categories.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
I didn't want a category that I felt could be too tracked to like wins and losses. I really wanted to stick to standard of care. Like, hey, where do you spend most of your time? The locker room, the training room, the weight room, the cafeteria? Like what staff is around you most of the time? The training staff, the strength staff? How do you travel? How do they treat your families?
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Like those are the core issues that impact their daily life. And I didn't want it to become like, hey, this is a good coach because we win a bunch of games. That's not telling us anything. There's some coaches that have a leadership council of older players that meet once a week and then acts on those recommendations. And I think that's what a good workplace looks like.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
That was something probably 15 years ago in the NFL, there wasn't any of that. It was very much, we're doing this because I'm the coach and I'm the boss and I say we're doing it. And now I think more and more of the younger coaches are coming in, being much more receptive to hearing feedback and acting on that feedback.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
That was one where I had to reach out to several people to make sure I was hearing it correctly of like, wait, I just want to make sure like for the fourth time, is this true?
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
Because that is so preposterous in a job where what you fuel your body with is so important to almost push them out of the building, to push them to fast food, to push them to poor nutrition is such like a backwards way of looking at our industry. It was crazy. And why do you think those teams do it? Is it just it's the way it was always done? Are they really trying to save money? I don't know.
Freakonomics Radio
When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee? (Update)
It was one team. It was the Arizona Cardinals who made people pay. There are three other teams that didn't provide it. And I don't think the cost they were charging would pay for the meals anyways. It's almost like the control factor of it, of, hey, just know your place.