The NRL can’t willingly bargain with match officials and register an enterprise agreement only to ignore that same deal as soon as dark clouds form on the horizon.Darren Kane is a sports columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.NRL's treatment of refs not how the doctors would be orderedIt is difficult to see other workers essential to the NRL copping the same treatment as referees. "But I also understand, and I've gone through it in my mind the past 24 hours, if there was one referee, 'what should we do?' Referees are considering strike action before the scheduled May 28 resumption of the NRL season in protest over plans to revert to one whistleblower per game.The Project Apollo taskforce has made the recommendation, which would result in an estimated $1 million in savings if the Australian Rugby League Commission approves the change.However, the match officials and their union, the Professional Rugby League Match Officials Incorporated (PRLMO), are livid about the lack of consultation, which they believe could be a breach of the enterprise bargaining agreement they recently signed with head office.PRLMO chairman Silvio Del Vecchio claimed referees boss Bernard Sutton informed him of plans to scrap the two-referee model via a phone call on Friday at 5.24pm - just six minutes before a Zoom meeting was scheduled to break the news to the whistleblowers. We need to be really prudent about what we do here and what it will look like. Some are casual with others full-time, a consequence being they must forgo other, potentially lucrative, career opportunities.Pretend the purpose of the NRL employing so many doctors was to ensure there’d never be less than two qualified medical professionals on duty, at every single match. It's not that I'm not a fan of one referee, just don't change it now and [rather] spend time on it during the off-season. There would be one less set of eyes on the ruck. My instincts tell me that the majority would find plenty of crap to deride, if matches had 16 referees, 360 cameras and three dozen officials in The Bunker, spying every twitching sinew and bending blade of grass.It is, however, in my remit to make this observation: in May 2019 the NRL registered with the Fair Work Commission an enterprise agreement, governing how it employs its full-time and casual match officials. Quite possibly, it’s the right decision for the sport and how the sport is played.However, a cavalier approach to rule changes is something different to a defiance of the obligations contained in employment arrangements the NRL has freely signed with a group of its own employees.It’s unlikely the officials will have a gigantic victory in the Fair Work Commission, but that’s not the point. And anyway, if the game needs doctors more than those doctors need the game, remind me who would have the "hand" in that negotiation?And once we conclude that the NRL would never treat its hypothetically employed doctors this way, then answer me this: how do we accept it in the case of officials?Rugby league needs referees and touch judges, just like doctors. "Any planned changes impacting players would surely have gone through the RLPA. "The NRL is seeking to slash costs after the coronavirus outbreak threatened its financial viability.
Because of course, the NRL has carte blanche to determine how rugby league is played and administered under its auspices.And if some of these doctors had the temerity to take umbrage at the decision, then that’d be disillusioning in the extreme, surely?My instinct is people would find plenty of crap to deride if matches had 16 referees, 360 cameras and three dozen officials in The BunkerOr actually, is it the case at all, that those noisy doctors deserve being spotlighted by the NRL as nothing other than ridiculously self-interested?Who knows? This is a mightily troubling portent for how the game treats its own.It’s too easy to slam the officials and their representative association as being militant, selfish and whatever else, but this misses the point. Those who eventually make it devote countless years to the game. "The match officials are committed to the restart of the game, but the way the NRL has announced this proposal is incredibly disrespectful," Del Vecchio said. The game is too fast.
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