NFL team owners, apparently rattled by public outrage over bad calls by scab referees during the first three weeks of professional football season, have agreed to let a little more of their enormous wealth trickle down to the referees union:

The locked-out NFL officials will return to work Thursday. The league announced a settlement was reached late Wednesday with the NFL Referees Association, which had been locked out for three months.

It is an eight-year deal, the NFL announced. Union members will vote on ratification on Friday.
The NFL and its referees strike a deal. Word comes two days after a controversial call made by a replacement ref in Monday night’s Packers-Seahawks game gave the story national exposure.

Thursday’s game between the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore will be the first game worked this season by union members, as the league lifted its lockout.

Greg Aiello, the NFL’s public relations man, reported via Twitter at about midnight ET that an agreement had been reached…

I’m sure the TV announcers — those glib ex-players in the extra-large suits — heaved a huge sigh of relief at news of the deal. They will no longer be in the awkward position of having to implicitly criticize their masters by pointing out that the scab refs were destroying the credibility of the league.

Footnote: Don’t you wish the American public could direct some outrage at the Republican scum who are trying to break the unions of schoolteachers, firefighters, and other essential public servants?

From Marc Ash of Reader Supported News:

Think workers have no value, think anyone can do any job, think experience doesn’t matter? Ask the Green Bay Packers or the Detroit Lions or any head coach or player in the NFL, they’ll break it down for you. American workers have value. The NFL like all American businesses (whether they know it or not) was built on the backs of workers. The workers are the process, and in the case of the NFL the fans and customers as well.