Artificially Restricted Labor Markets and Worker Dignity in Professional Football

Abstract

This article focuses on the effect of labor market restrictions on worker dignity during the recruitment and hiring processes by examining a labor-market case study in which worker power is severely constrained through industry practices. Specifically, the authors study workers who attempted to gain employment in the National Football League to explore how artificially restricted labor markets limit workers' market power. Findings from extensive field notes, observations of player assessments, and semistructured interviews suggest that although workers possess elite skills necessary for employment, industry restrictions on employees' market power enable employers to demand painful and dehumanizing concessions that seriously challenge workers' dignity. The findings presented here extend previous studies of threats to worker dignity from shop floors and workplaces to labor markets and to elite, highly skilled workers.

Race and the NFL Draft: Views from the Auction Block

“…This finding is consistent with literature on the survival skills that African Americans employ when dealing with discrimination (Dufur and Feinberg 2007;Feagin and Sikes 2001). Resigned acceptance of discriminatory actions and the establishment of defensive orientations are two coping strategies for dealing with discrimination, and individual responses to the combine process reflect the ways minority athletes utilized these options.…”

“…As was true when faced with other uncomfortable assessment practices, however, none of the players we spoke to or observed left the interview or objected to the questions, and none reported seeing or hearing of any player who took those steps. When asked why they acquiesced to such questioning, white players tended to focus on potential remuneration making the unpleasantness worthwhile, while minority players described feeling as though leaving would not improve the situation and might, in fact, incur considerable costs in the form of not being drafted (Dufur and Feinberg 2007). This difference may reflect the tendency observed elsewhere of minorities to learn through experience that lack of access to institutional power leads in most cases to being unable to force those institutions to change and to accusations of "overplaying" the race card to the complainant's detriment (Weitzer 2000).…”

“…Players of all races find the evaluation process at the draft invasive, offensive, and, sometimes, physically painful (see Dufur and Feinberg 2007). Specific to our research question, results from our analysis of players' responses point to substantial differences in (1) the ways white and minority athletes are treated by hiring agents based on racial stereotyping, particularly during the interview process and (2) minority respondents' perceptions of this experience as inherently racist even in the absence of overt discrimination.…”

Blue-Collar Discourses of Workplace Dignity: Using Outgroup Comparisons to Construct Positive Identities

“…Even highly skilled, well-paid workers are not immune to effects of indignity at work. Dufur and Feinberg (2007) detailed how National Football League recruits experience regular affronts to their dignity-comparing at times the draft process to the slave tradebecause of the power imbalance produced by artificially restricted labor markets for professional athletes vying for lucrative contracts.…”

Is it safe to bring myself to work? Understanding LGBTQ experiences of workplace dignity

“…The first is identity-indifferent inequality, which is the product of economic mechanisms. These inequalities include a variety of structural constraints inherent in the employment relationship, such as power imbalances deriving from internal hierarchies, unequal distribution of risk and rewards by occupational category, or differences in working conditions based on professional status (Crowley, 2012;Dufur & Feinberg, 2007). The second is identity-sensitive inequality, which is a result of responses to certain (mis)construals of people's identities, such as through sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, and the like.…”