Can a minor league players’ union save MLB from itself?
Here's hoping everyone had a wonderful Labor Day, which has been a federal holiday since 1894, which is about how long minor league baseball players have been earning poverty-level wages and living on hot dogs and popcorn. They can't afford Cracker Jack.
Ben Verlander, Justin's brother, played five minor league seasons before he became a Fox Sports analyst. He wrote this about life on the farm in 2021:
“Once you get drafted, baseball becomes a business. It’s about the bottom line and making as much money as possible for those at the top. It isn’t about a glamorous or even a comfortable experience for those involved.
“Unfortunately, for years, that has
meant underpaying and cutting corners wherever possible at the minor league
level: the pay, the nutrition, the hotels, the clubhouses, the list goes on.”
The nonprofit group Advocates for Minor Leaguers notes that minor league wages range from $400 to $700 a week over the course of a season, and they are paid only in season. The vast majority of minor leaguers, then, make less than $12,000 a year, which is below the U.S. federal poverty level.
Ten-hour bus ride, anyone? Pack a Lunchable.
Seven weeks ago, Major League Baseball agreed to pay minor leaguers $185 million to settle a federal lawsuit alleging violations of minimum wage laws.
In a statement, MLB said, “We are only in the second year of a major overhaul of the 100-year-old player development system and have made great strides to improve the quality of life for minor league players.”
MLB agreed to rescind any prohibitions against teams paying wages to minor league players outside of the season,
which is to say MLB will now allow its franchisees to pay minor leaguers during spring training – if the teams so choose.
MLB fought the lawsuit for eight years. While it was doing so, it took over the minor leagues (last year) and cut 43 teams from the system.
MLB improved conditions, incrementally. More, it improved the bottom line for the 30 owners who pay commissioner Rob Manfred’s $11-million salary.
Six weeks after MLB settled the aforementioned suit – the week before Labor Day – the players association finally made a move.
After decades of either ignoring the plight of minor leaguers or selling them out in collective bargaining negotiations, the MLBPA on Aug. 28 sent authorization cards to minor leaguers. It’s the first step to unionizing a class of professional athletes who’d been without representation for 100-plus years.
The MLBPA’S aim is to form a separate bargaining unit under its umbrella, to give voice to 5,000 minor leaguers who live with host families, or in dormitories, and subsist on box lunches and second jobs.
“Minor league players need some leverage when dealing with multimillion (and multi-billion) owners, and a union can give them that,” said Columbus labor lawyer Bob Handelman. “Without that they can be abused and misused. Almost all other professional athletes have unions for good reason. Minor league players deserve to be paid enough to support themselves and their families yearround.” On Tuesday, the MLBPA asked management to formally recognize its minor league branch. If MLB does so, the union will not need 30% of the workers to sign their authorization cards, which leads to an official vote. It’ll be done.
On the other hand, if MLB does not formally recognize, its decision might be cast as a provocation. Manfred, at the behest of his owners, will be saying, “OK, put it to a vote, and let’s see how many farmhands have the guts to organize against the barons who hold the strings to their precarious careers. How many of you agitators think you’ll still have a career?”
(See: Curt Flood.) Presumably, if minor leaguers are pushed, they will go ahead and formally vote to unionize. It would fit with the times: Young people who are tired of substandard wages and/or poor working
conditions have been pushing to unionize at Amazon, Apple, Starbucks, Chipotle and so forth. A recent Gallup poll found that pro-union sentiment is at its highest point since 1968.
This new generation doesn’t consume sports in the same way, either. They were born with smartphones in their hands, and they have serious expectations when it comes to the entertainment they choose. Plus, they stopped playing baseball when they burnt out playing on the travel team in fifth grade.
MLB has responded by doing little, in the grand scheme of things, to grow the game at the grassroots level – which is where future fans are most often created. The owners are squeezing every nickel they can out of what was once America’s pastime, and exhibit A is the contraction of minor league baseball – which is, ostensibly, a divestment in the development of talent and the engagement of
fans.
It may be that unionized minor leagues is the first step in long journey to lead the game back to relevance, with the owners kicking and screaming.
marace@dispatch.com