4/5/2013(sat)

[yoon.]

With the Words ‘I’m Gay,’ an N.B.A. Center Breaks a Barrier

In 12 seasons as an N.B.A. player, Jason Collins has never been an All-Star or a scoring leader or even a full-time starter, but on Monday he shattered one of the last great barriers in professional sports.

“I’m a 34-year-old N.B.A. center. I’m black and I’m gay,” Collins, who finished this season with the Washington Wizards, writes in the May 6 edition of Sports Illustrated. The magazine published the article online Monday morning.

With that statement, Collins became the first openly gay male athlete who is still active in a major American team sport. Other gay athletes, including the former N.B.A. center John Amaechi, have waited until retirement to divulge their sexuality publicly.

The announcement followed recent decisions by two other athletes — the American soccer player Robbie Rogers and the women’s basketball player Brittney Griner — to acknowledge that they are gay. When Rogers, 25, revealed last month that he was gay, he also said he was retiring from soccer. (He has since indicated he may play again.) Griner, the No. 1 pick in the W.N.B.A. draft, will soon embark on her professional career.

Collins’s announcement was greeted with an outpouring of support from teammates, league executives and major National Basketball Association stars, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade among them.

“Proud of @jasoncollins34,” Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers star, wrote on his Twitter account. “Don’t suffocate who u r because of the ignorance of others.” Bryant added two hashtags: “courage” and “support.”

Some of the league’s biggest names followed suit, including the Lakers’ Steve Nash, Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant, the Knicks’ Jason Kidd and San Antonio’s Tony Parker. Several teams sent out statements of support. Prominent coaches, including Boston’s Doc Rivers, who has worked with Collins, gave support in interviews.

However, one National Football League player, Mike Wallace of the Miami Dolphins, posted a comment on Twitter: “All these beautiful women in the world and guys wanna mess with other guys.” He later deleted the comment and issued an apology.

And on ESPN, the N.B.A. analyst Chris Broussard, citing his religious beliefs, said that living openly as a homosexual was a sin and that doing so was “walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ.”

But those comments were greatly outweighed by the supportive ones Collins received, particularly from his N.B.A. peers.

“The overwhelming positive reaction does not surprise me,” N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern said in a telephone interview. “Our players are actually knowledgeable and sophisticated on this issue, and our teams understand it completely. I would have expected them to be supportive, and they are.”

President Obama called Collins “to express his support and said he was impressed by his courage,” according to a Twitter post from the White House. Michelle Obama, on her account, called Collins’s announcement “a huge step forward for our country.”

Collins becomes a free agent July 1 and intends to pursue another contract, which might be viewed as a truer test for how N.B.A. teams deal with a gay athlete. However, complicating that question is the fact that Collins, at 34, is a marginal player with limited skills, more valued for his locker-room presence than his play and not at the top of anyone’s list of players to sign. He appeared in just 38 games this season, which he split between the Boston Celtics and the Wizards, and was used sparingly.

Collins was never among the most skilled centers to begin with, instead relying on his size (7 feet, 255 pounds), intelligence and work ethic to carve out a niche after being drafted 18th over all in 2001.

In his Sports Illustrated essay, Collins alludes to his future in the league: “I’ve reached that enviable state in life in which I can do pretty much what I want. And what I want is to continue to play basketball. I still love the game, and I still have something to offer. My coaches and teammates recognize that. At the same time, I want to be genuine and authentic and truthful.”

One N.B.A. scout estimated that Collins had a 25 percent chance of making an opening-night roster next season, based solely on his basketball skills. But a general manager for another team predicted that Collins would be back in the league because of his reputation as a solid teammate and leader. That general manager said that Collins’s disclosure of his sexuality could even appeal to a forward-thinking owner.

Dave Kopay, who came out as gay in 1975 after a nine-year N.F.L. career, said on Monday he had waited nearly 40 years for this moment. “What he did is not easy,” Kopay said. “And I’m overwhelmed with how he’s done this. I’m so, so happy right now.”

Amaechi, who announced that he was gay after a five-year N.B.A. career, called Collins’s public declaration “undoubtedly groundbreaking.”

“We are unusually blessed to have such an eloquent spokesman,” Amaechi said in a phone interview from England, where he lives. “When I say ‘we,’ I mean society, as opposed to just gay people. Anybody who has ever interviewed Jason knows he is not just your average athlete. He’s cerebral, thoughtful, kind — so many things that many athletes are not enough of. Add this authentic declaration on top of things, it makes him one of the perfect role models for our young people.”

Amaechi was among several gay-rights advocates who said it mattered whether Collins played next season.

“If he’s not on a team, he’s just another guy who did it at the end of his career, and he retired,” said Jim Buzinski, a co-founder of Outsports, a Web site devoted to gays and sports. “Until we see him walking onto a court, in either a starting lineup or in a backup role off the bench, and there’s that anticipation that Jason Collins is going to step on the floor — it’s not going to matter as much until that moment. That’s what everyone is waiting for.”

Until now, Collins’s only public hint of his orientation was a subtle one. He wore No. 98 for the Celtics and the Wizards, in honor of Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was killed in 1998. “The number has great significance to the gay community,” Collins wrote.

Collins informed his Wizards teammates, as well as Stern, in a series of phone calls Monday morning, before the story was published online. One Wizards teammate, Emeka Okafor, said that if Collins returned to Washington, “we’ll welcome him back with open arms.”

“He’s still the same guy,” Okafor said. “He’s just let us know more about him.”

Collins grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs and played college basketball at Stanford. As a professional, Collins has averaged a modest 3.6 points and 3.8 rebounds a game while playing for six teams. He spent most of his first seven seasons with the Nets, helping them reach the finals in 2002 and 2003.

But Collins kept his sexuality deeply hidden. In an accompanying essay in Sports Illustrated, Collins’s twin brother, Jarron — a former N.B.A. center who now scouts for the Los Angeles Clippers — wrote that he “had no idea” that Jason was gay until Jason told him last summer.

Collins’s announcement also surprised his closest friends, including Mark Madsen, who played three years with Collins at Stanford and another season in the N.B.A., with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Madsen was among the people Collins called Monday morning.

“I would say one of Jason’s amazing characteristics is he has always been unafraid to express his opinion,” Madsen said in a telephone interview, adding, “He’s not going to be afraid of anything, really.”

The Nets’ Jerry Stackhouse said that Collins, his teammate for one season in Atlanta, was the perfect individual “to carry the flag for other players.”

“The fact that Jason’s been in the league for 12 years and has had so many different teammates, he’s got people to vouch for him,” Stackhouse said.

All of the major sports leagues have been preparing, to various degrees, for the moment when an active player comes out. The N.F.L., amid speculation that a handful of players were preparing to make the move en masse, has been working with gay advocacy groups to smooth the way for acceptance. The National Hockey League also recently announced a comprehensive program for training and counseling on gay issues for its teams and players. The N.B.A. has long included education in this area in its rookie and its veteran development programs.

In his article, Collins wrote that he considered coming out a couple of years ago. He said he made the decision to do so when Joseph P. Kennedy III, Collins’s roommate at Stanford, marched in Boston’s gay pride parade last year. Collins said he was envious and frustrated.

“I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore,” Collins wrote. “I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, ‘Me, too.’ ”

Unions That Built Germany Eroded by Rules Buoying Economy

Germany’s top trade unionist, Michael Sommer, looked out on a May Day crowd of workers and told them that a proposed labor flexibility plan wouldn’t create a single job.

Ten years later, the plan is law. Joblessness is close to a two-decade low and employment has increased by more than 3 million.

Employees of online retailer Amazon take part in a demonstration organised by union Ver.di in Bad Hersfeld, Germany, on April 9, 2013.

Employees of online retailer Amazon take part in a demonstration organised by union Ver.di in Bad Hersfeld, Germany, on April 9, 2013. Photographer: Uwe Zucchi/AFP/Getty Images

It’s unions whose numbers are diminishing. As more and more employees work for temporary agencies or on project-driven contracts, the jobs being created are mostly non-union, in a country whose modern form was built by organized labor.

Founded in the mid-19th century, German unions rose to power in the 1950s, when they were crucial in turning an economy shattered by World War II into an economic miracle. Their impact is waning at a time when Germany is being held up as a model for debt-stricken Europe.

“The influence of labor unions has diminished significantly as a result of those reforms,” said Thomas Harjes, senior European economist at Barclays Bank Plc in Frankfurt. “They’re fighting hard to win back some sway.”

Labor’s latest woes are being heard by Germany’s leadership. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who’s running for re- election this year from the Christian Democratic Union, said in January after meeting with the DGB union federation’s Sommer that Germany needed to “keep an eye” on contract work. It “can increasingly turn into circumvention of sensible union agreements,” she said.

Schroeder’s Plan

Unions represented 25 percent of the German workforce in 2000, three years before then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder started implementing a program for labor-market flexibility.

That number dropped to 18 percent in 2011, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, as less generous jobless benefits and easier rules on firing pushed workers into lower-paid temporary jobs. The absolute number of union members fell by 21 percent.

At the same time, the new flexibility helped the German economy, Europe’s largest, contain unemployment during the 2009 crisis and emerge faster and stronger from the recession than most of its euro-region peers.

“Germany was a decade ago called the ‘sick man’ of Europe,” European Central Bank Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen said in a Frankfurt speech last month. “Since then, the country has become a showcase of how well-designed reforms can turn the situation around.”

Unemployed Youth

German employment was almost 42 million in February, the most on record. Unemployment, at 5.4 percent on an EU-harmonized basis, is the lowest in the euro area after Austria and less than half of the average in the 17-nation region. Youth joblessness of 7.7 percent in Germany compares with 23.9 percent in the euro area.

Temporary work is one way for them to find employment. In Germany, about 7,500 agencies offer workers a job via that channel. ManpowerGroup Deutschland, the third-largest, employed about 20,000 people last year, twice as many as 2002.

“Temporary work has a reputation problem, which is unfortunate,” said Stephan Rathgeber, spokesman for the Eschborn, Germany-based company. “It facilitates the entry into the labor market, protects against unemployment in times of crises and is especially attractive for qualified workers.”

For Benjamin Fendt, 21, temporary work meant posts at 18 different companies after he finished his apprenticeship as an industrial and precision machinist in 2010. Sometimes the turnover was just over a week.

Too Qualified

“Temporary work was the only option to make some money,” he said in a phone interview from Landshut, Germany. “I had hoped to stay somewhere longer. All I wanted was a secure job.”

What he got was work he was overqualified or not trained for, long commutes and trouble with pay; and after an odyssey of more than two years a permanent job at plastics company Riedl Kunststofftechnik und Formenbau GmbH & Co.KG in Erding, Germany.

Fendt has been a member of IG Metall, Germany’s biggest union, since 2011, an example of how unions are beginning to court temp workers. Today, about 20 percent of all workers on loan in the metal industry are members, compared with almost 50 percent of permanent staff.

Another sector with union representation is contract work, which grew last year after unions and employers began agreeing to introduce minimum wages for temporary workers. While employees in temporary work are lent to a company for a specific period of time, contract workers are employed for a specific project, with pay often falling short of hourly wage minimums.

Fewer Accords

The share of companies following collective wage agreements fell to 47 percent in 2006 from 63 percent in 2001, according to an OECD report published in September.

“We have to adapt to a changing environment,” said Peter Donath, who heads the operations and participation-policy division at IG Metall in Frankfurt. “For a long time, we haven’t paid attention to temporary and contract work because we were focusing on our core factories.”

While IG Metall membership has edged higher in the past two years, at 2.26 million it is still almost 500,000 lower than at the beginning of the century.

Similarly, Ver.di, Germany’s biggest union when it was founded in 2001, has lost more than a quarter of its force since then and has ranked second behind IG Metall since 2005.

“Since the crisis, sentiment has changed,” said Christoph Schmitz, spokesman for Ver.di in Berlin. “The feeling among workers that somebody needs to represent their interests has increased.” In the first quarter, more people joined Ver.di, which represents services workers, than left the union.

Rising Rarely

Elsewhere in Europe, union membership has risen in seven euro countries studied by the OECD and declined in eight in the past decade. As a percent of the work force membership has risen in only two: Belgium and Italy.

Schroeder, from the Social Democratic Party, first outlined his intentions to change the labor system in March 2003, six months after his government was re-elected by the narrowest margin since 1945. At that time, the economy was contracting at the fastest pace in seven years and unemployment was approaching 10 percent, tied with Greece for second-highest after Spain.

The laws lowered welfare payments for long-term unemployed, withheld benefits from unemployed people who reject job offers and shortened the period for assistance. The measures also reduced early-retirement options and made it easier for companies to lay off employees in a country with employment protection stronger than the OECD average.

Two Classes?

Temporary and contract work spiraled in response. In June last year, 908,000 people were working on loan, one third of them in the metal and electrical industries, a traditional union stronghold, according to data by Germany’s Labor Agency. In 2000, temporary work had encompassed 338,000 workers.

“New forms of work have created two classes of employment, with different conditions for core and temporary workers,” said Ulrich Walwei, deputy director of Germany’s Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg. “If temporary contracts were a transition into perpetual work, unions could probably live with it. But unfortunately, they’re sometimes just revolving doors.”

Almost half of all temporary contracts end after less than three months and, at 1,419 euros ($1,858) per month on average, pay little more than half of regular employment in 2010, according to labor-agency data.

Still, wage disparity narrowed last year with the introduction of industry premiums in pay. They add as much as 50 percent to hourly wages of temporary workers in the metal and electrical industries, according to IG Metall data.

Union leader Sommer, who characterized his ties to Schroeder as a “civilized non-relationship” in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt this month, hasn’t changed his view that the success of the economy isn’t related to the labor- market overhaul of the early 2000s.

“It was and is our strong export economy, flexible work models, co-management, free collective bargaining and last but not least wise crisis politics in 2008 and 2009,” he said. The labor overhaul means “dumping wages, precarious employment, a low-wage sector and old-age poverty.”

[Nayeon]

참석해용ㅎㅎ 동성애관한주제는 여러번나오는듯하네용!ㅋㅋ

[PIONEER]

참석합니당~~ㅋ 이야기할거 많겠어요~ㅋ

[ET.Megan]

참석하고 싶습니다.~

[John Han]

갑자기 일이 생겨서 오늘 참석 못하게 될 것 같습니다 ㅠㅠ 열공하세요~!

[Munn]

가는중 ㅎㅎㅎㅎ

[Andy(staff)★]

토픽 준비합니다.