NFL files grievance against NFLPA to stop its annual team report cards

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The NFL filed a grievance against the NFL Players Association, asking the union to stop its annual team report cards and saying the exercise violates the collective bargaining agreement by airing public criticism of teams, according to documents obtained by ESPN.

The league claims the report cards, which poll players on various aspects of working conditions, violate a CBA clause that says NFL owners and the union must "use reasonable efforts to curtail public comments by club personnel or players which express criticism of any club, its coach, or its operation and policy," according to an August letter from the league's management council to NFLPA general counsel Tom DePaso that was obtained by ESPN.

After months of discussions with the league after the letter, the NFLPA alerted its players to the grievance last week and said it's "moving ahead with this year's survey," according to a union email obtained by ESPN.

"We have responded to the grievance with our intention to fight against this action and continue what's clearly become an effective tool for comparing workplace standards across the league and equipping you to make informed career decisions," the NFLPA wrote in its email to players.

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At the NFL league meeting in March, New York Jets chairman Woody Johnson -- who along with Art Rooney of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots, Michael Bidwill of the Arizona Cardinals and David Tepper of the Carolina Panthers received ownership grades of D or worse -- called the survey "totally bogus" and hinted that it violated the CBA.

Johnson said he took issue with "how they collected the information [and] who they collected it from. [It] was supposed to be according to the agreement we have with the league. It's supposed to be a process [where] we have representatives and they have representatives, so we know that it's an honest survey.

"And that was violated, in my opinion. I'm going to leave it at that, but I think there are a lot of owners that looked at that survey and said this is not fair, it's not balanced, it's not every player, it's not even representative of the players."

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One owner told ESPN that "the only owners who don't care for [the report cards] are the ones who get the subpar grades."

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