Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

For the National Football League Players Association, that’s the reality after an overnight election saw DeMaurice Smith retained as executive director on the first ballot. And thus ended an election process that had, in many circles, been derided as something of a circus. Ultimately, such a characterization seems more than a little unfair. After all, as recent headlines demonstrate, the circus is capable of reform. One wonders if the same can be said for the NFLPA.

Recently, the NFLPA has struggled mightily to hold their ground in the increasingly one-sided relationship between ownership and labor in America’s biggest sports league. Just look at the myriad of defeats suffered by the players: a decreasing share of league revenue, a rookie salary scale that flattens the earning power of young players, and a near-total ceding of all disciplinary power to Commissioner Roger Goodell. If an NFL Head Coach takes loss after loss, they’re eventually shown the door. It’s a results based business after all. But for DeMaurice Smith, the “consequence” of the NFLPA’s recent run of failure is a “unanimous” re-election.

If insanity is defined as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,” then it’s fair to say that the players re-elected lunacy. And make no mistake, the NFLPA had plenty of options in front of them.

The election featured nine candidates for the executive director position, including an ex-player who advocated for an 18-game season, a former vice admiral in the Navy who believed the relationship between the league and the players had become too contentious, and a union insider whose name was suspiciously only added to the ballot at the last minute. Given the sheer volume of candidates, and their often unconventional nature, it is perhaps not a surprise that Smith emerged from the election unscathed.

It is also not surprising that the entire process has only added to the perception of the union as clumsy, ineffectual, and in decline. To which we can only say, congratulations, NFLPA, and welcome to the club! The state of American labor has been perilous and depressing for decades now. Why should some of the world’s most gifted, irreplaceable athletes have it any different?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014, America’s union membership rate was 11.1 percent, falling .2 percent from 2013, and continuing a decline that began in the 1950s. Looked through this lens, perhaps the NFLPA should be encouraged. After all, by simply continuing to exist, they are bucking a longstanding national trend!

Such a precipitous decline in the size, and scale, and power of organized labor doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a product of companies that invest time, energy, and D-level acting talent into anti-union propaganda at every opportunity. It’s a product of politicians who champion Orwellian “right-to-work” laws designed to bankrupt unions. And it’s a product of an American public that has been conditioned, over time, to think of unions as unnecessary.

This is nonsense, and always has been. It is no coincidence that with organized labor in decline, wages are stagnant, pensions and benefits are disappearing, and inequality is approaching truly hideous new frontiers. And, wouldn’t you know, as the power of the NFLPA erodes, the same trends play out amongst our gridiron warriors. A 2010 analysis by University of Michigan Economics Professor Mark Perry found that over the past decade, the share of total team payroll going to the highest paid fifth of NFL players increased by 6%. One suspects that the trend has continued in recent years, given that the 2011 collective bargaining agreement imposed a rookie wage scale.

The result is a system where stars make top dollar, but the majority of experienced players can easily be replaced by younger, cheaper alternatives. In his comprehensive look at the results of that CBA, written two years after it took effect, the Boston Globe’s Ben Volin quotes one agent who says teams have told him that minimum-salary veterans are simply too expensive to sign. And that, in football, as in life, is a near textbook example of how the middle class gets gutted, one cost cutting measure at a time.

Of course, in 2015, the NFL minimum rookie salary will be $435,000, far more than your average American will take home this year, or any year of their life. It’s because of this, ultimately, that the labor plight of the NFLPA will largely attract mockery, rather than empathy, from the media and fans. No matter how many times they’ve had their lunch handed to them by the owners at the bargaining table, after all, high level professional athletes still have it pretty good compared to society at large. So what if it’s mere crumbs from the table of a league that cleared nearly $10 billion dollars in revenue in 2014… those are bigger crumbs than we’ll ever see!

Perhaps its time for Joe Six-Pack in Waukesha to realize that he and Richard Sherman are side-by-side in the same fight. And they both need to fight the prevailing notion that to own is divine, and to work is common. They need to reestablish the fact that you can build all the companies, all the brands, all the stadiums in the world, and it all means nothing without the labor actually turning gears, and catching passes. The only way to send that message is through organization, leverage, and a willingness to fight.

That’s what Michelle Roberts made clear, as she took the reins of the National Basketball Player’s Association. “Why don’t we have the owners play half the games?” she asked, rhetorically, in her now infamous comments to ESPN The Magazine upon assuming her post as the union’s executive director.

“There would be no money if not for the players. Let’s call it what it is. There. Would. Be. No. Money. Thirty more owners can come in, and nothing will change. [If the players] go? The game will change. So let’s stop pretending.”

Roberts understands that the first step in winning any political battle is framing the terms of the debate. And make no mistake, a war is coming. The NBPA’s decision, just last week, to reject “smoothing” of the salary cap is simply the latest sign that not only will the union opt out of their CBA following the 2016–17 season, but that they intend on fundamentally rewriting the relationship between players and owners. Who says revenues must be split somewhere close to the middle? Who says an age limit is actually benefitting the athletes themselves? Who says a salary cap is really necessary at all?

Of course, tough rhetoric is one thing, and actually winning the next labor war will be something else entirely. When the lockout arrives, Roberts will be forced to confront the same challenges faced by any union. Namely, the fact that billionaire owners are far more easily able to hunker down and endure a long work stoppage, compared to players who actually depend on their paychecks for a living. Then again, as Roberts explained to the players prior to her election, “my past is littered with the bones of men who were foolish enough to think I was someone they could sleep on.”

Perhaps the NFL’s players would have been well served to find their own wartime consigliere. Instead, they continued hitching their wagon to the troubled tenure of Smith. They’ll have one more opportunity to oust him, in 2018, before their own CBA expires following the 2020 season. But if things continue on their current course, by that time, the NFLPA might be one of the last vestiges of American labor.