As I understand, they are refusing the offered salary mentioned above and I believe they are also resistant to being held accountable for bad calls.

How much do part-timers expect to get?! You seem to be saying that their part-times status is some sort of affliction or hardship. It's a sideline for most of them. And comparisons to the other sports officials are ridiculous, since the jobs are so different. There was a point a few years ago when Marshall Faulk with a brand new contract commensurate with his status as reigning NFL MVP was making less than the #6 starter for the Yankees. Football players make less than baseball or basketball players, so why should the referees make more than the other sports' officials?

Why should the Saints' suspensions be overturned? Those actions were immoral and possibly criminal, let alone against the specific rules of the NFL. Back when the Patriots were getting excoriated for Spygate, their defense of "no harm done" was getting brushed aside with the point that what was done was explicitly against NFL rules. Well, so was what the Saints did, in addition to being against any reasonable standards of morality, and at a time when the NFL was making a definite, if somewhat misguided and misapplied attempt to curtail injuries to players.

As for flexing their muscles, what else are muscles for? Why should they knuckle under to any demands from a peripheral group that is not essential to the job? The replacements are inexperienced, and will get better. They have not yet cost anyone a game with their errors, and will need to do a lot worse before they convince me that they are significantly inferior to the sorts of top-quality officiating crews that extended two touchdown drives in a playoff game with extremely bad calls last season, or who cost the Giants a playoff game in 2003 with such an egregious miscalling of the final play that the NFL apologized!