Keller @ Large: If You Work, You Should Care About Deflategate
BOSTON (CBS) - Picture your boss pulling you aside today and telling you that you're being severely disciplined, with a significant loss of pay and prestige, for stealing food out of the office refrigerator. No one saw you do it. The circumstantial evidence is sketchy at best. And if you want to appeal the punishment? Good luck, that same boss will be hearing your appeal.
That is the unjust nightmare that Tom Brady claims he's been subjected to by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The federal courts have ultimately sided with the league, and unless Brady takes a longshot stab at getting the Supreme Court to weigh in, his four-game suspension is a done deal.
And even if you couldn't care less about Brady or pro football, the worker's rights issues raised by this case ought to catch your eye.
In a brief filed with the feds in support of Brady, the AFL-CIO argued that Goodell violated the principle of "basic procedural fairness" when, for instance, he claimed Brady had been an active participant in the alleged deflated balls plot, when his own investigators had charged Brady was only "generally aware" of it.
And no less than Kenneth Feinberg, the legendary arbitrator who oversaw the One Fund after the Boston Marathon bombings, also argued that upholding Goodell's kangaroo court would erode public trust in arbitration, with important ramifications beyond the football world.
Brady's legal problem is that his union gave away the store to Goodell in their last contract. So the rest of us are left to ponder the risk that unless your contract insists on it, you can't necessarily count on the boss to play fair.