The starting lineup – professional sports unions

Major League Baseball has the Major League Baseball Players Association which negotiated the first ever Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) in professional sports in 1968. The National Hockey League Players’ Association represents its membership in all matters dealing with their working conditions and contractual rights as well as serving as their exclusive collective bargaining agent. The National Football League Players Association is the labor organization representing the professional football players in the National Football League. The National Basketball Players Association is a labor union that represents basketball players in the National Basketball Association.

Meanwhile the Professional Hockey Players’ Association represents approximately 1,600 minor league players across 64 teams throughout the American Hockey League, the East Coast Hockey league and the Central Hockey League which are the premier player development leagues for the National Hockey League. The Association of Minor League Umpires was founded in 1999 to represent minor league umpires under the umbrella of the Professional Baseball Umpire Corp.

All team sports have unions to represent them in contract negotiations, arbitration hearings, working conditions and do all the things unions do for their members – almost all groups, that is. Minor League baseball is the lone group of professional athletes not represented by a players’ organization. There are close to 200 minor league affiliate teams in the United States with another 50 in Latin America. That means there are 7,000 to 8,000 young players vying for 750 MLB positions that have no representation whatsoever.

Below the ‘Mendoza Line’ – Minor League Baseball salaries

Do minor league players need to be represented by a player’s association – a union? They seem to be a happy lot enjoying what they are doing. That is not surprising as they are pursuing a dream playing the most challenging of all team sports. However, it does seem that a case for a minor league player’s union would not be too difficult to make. One wonders if they would not be more relaxed and totally focused on their jobs, playing baseball, if their strict financial restraints were loosened a bit. After all, a $20 per day meal allowance may well put the next meal in doubt.

The MLB minimum salary has risen to $500,000 a year. This is not to question that salary amount as it has been hard fought and most likely well deserved. On the other hand, most minor league players earn less than the federal poverty level, which is $11,490 for a single person and $23,550 for a family of four. Many minor league players have families. While MLB salaries have risen by more than 2,000 percent since 1976 under the CBA, MiLB salaries have not even doubled in that time span increasing by just 75 percent. Minor league players are governed by that same Collective Bargaining Agreement that governs MLB players.

While every major league player is guaranteed a minimum salary of $500,000 per year, there are thousands of minor league players living at or below the federal poverty level. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

Minor league players have no recourse to their situation. They must sign with the team that drafts them and, of course, cannot negotiate with other teams like they could prior to the implementation of the First Year Player Draft in 1965. Many young players now do not sign when first drafted but wisely decide to continue their college education as a foundation for their future and as a leveraging tool to try to improve their draft ranking for a future draft. Doing so helps them secure a better signing bonus – a bonus structure that was reduced in the last CBA and remains in effect until 2016.

Once signed, minor league players can only become free agents and sign with another team after seven years, a time period that might by then have excluded them from any real possibility of making it to the big leagues. A shorter period of time until free agency would allow players the option of signing with another team that is in need of their skill set rather than backing them up in the minor league system of their drafting team.

‘Monopoly’ not ‘The Price is Right’ – Major League Baseball Antitrust Exemption

The working conditions of all minor league players are firmly controlled by Major League Baseball which has the only monopoly in professional sports and most likely one of few in all of the United States. Therefore, Major League Baseball can do as it pleases. Awarded in 1922, Major League Baseball was given an antitrust exemption. Antitrust laws are statutes developed by the U.S. Government to protect consumers from monopolistic business practices and ensure that fair competition exists. MLB still has that exemption.

Very briefly in 1922, “Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes held that professional baseball was not within the scope of federal antitrust law, which governs only interstate commerce. Since baseball games were ‘purely state affairs’ taking place in only a single state and the only way to follow the action was by attending the game, he reasoned that the business was intrastate, rather than interstate in nature.” (PhilsBaseball.com). The only way to ever overturn the antitrust exemption is by an act of Congress and Congress has side stepped this one like a bare foot kid walking through a cow pasture while at the same time diving in head first into the steroid issue in MLB in 2005. With all of the social media means of following MLB it would seem that MLB’s antitrust exemption would now be ripe for the picking.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
(From the Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)

The reason for the low minor league salary structure maintained by MLB, simply put, is that they can without any fear of repercussions because of the almost century-old antitrust exemption in their hind pockets. There simply is no competition. It is difficult to imagine the low wages, lower than workers in fast food chains, could even be a partial financial concern for major league teams – many with huge streams of TV revenue. Perhaps it is the fear of the unknown that prevents minor league salaries from being raised to an adequate living wage and how it might affect the minor league structure. This again brings us back to the issue of no players’ union in minor league baseball, whereas there is one with every other professional sport.

No Designated Hitter – No Minor League Baseball unions

Marvin Miller, the well respected Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) from 1966 to 1982, certainly looked at the possibility of a minor league player’s association. He, along with retired MLB Players Association attorney Gene Orza and labor lawyer Don Wollett, cited three reasons that make minor league unionization very difficult if not impossible.

• The first reason as could be expected is a financial consideration. The financial rewards for any existing major union would be minimal with a relatively small take on union dues making it difficult to actually provide services for the members. This coupled with expenses for staff, office space, attorneys, travel and other expenses function as a disincentive for any union taking on a minor league challenge.
• Secondly, minor league baseball teams are widely spread out across the continent from Tacoma, Washington to Portland, Maine – from Jupiter, Florida to Midland, Michigan. The task of organizing a group of employees spread out across North American is a daunting task as is servicing those employees. Major sports unions face the same difficulties but their union dues are many times higher than they could ever be at the minor league level.
• The third and perhaps major impediment against a minor league union is simply the unwillingness of young players to take the risk of offending their parent team by lobbying for union status. Marvin Miller: “The notion that these very young, inexperienced people were going to defy the owners, when they had stars in their eyes about making it to the major leagues, it’s just not going to happen.” Gene Orza: “Young players are unlikely to make noise while they’re trying to get promoted—they don’t want to tick off [the club] by being the person who forms the union.”

In 2006 Garrett Broshuis was playing for the Connecticut Defenders, the AA affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, and like most minor leaguers was living on a subsistent wage. In frustration with his living conditions he finally concluded: “It’s not fair that I’m playing in front of 7,000 or 8,000 people each night and making pennies. Every single player you talk to, even if they realize [a union] would be a good thing, is also scared to death to talk to another player about it.” Broshuis felt that it would take a César Chávez or a Curt Flood type person for a minor league union to ever materialize.

Is former minor leaguer-turned-attorney Garrett Broshuis treading on sacred ground by suing several major league franchises for the low wages paid to current and past minor leaguers?
(Photo credit – Jeff Roberson)

A Curveball – The Fair Labor Standards Act

Perhaps Broshius saw himself in that role, the one to lead the charge against the 130-year-old American institution that is Major League Baseball, but he also knew first hand how daunting the task would be. He was not able to do it as a player and he returned to university to continue his study for his law degree. He is now an attorney specializing in litigation and part of another approach in attempting to secure pay commensurate with their work for minor league players. The antitrust exemption prevents Major League Baseball from being sued for federal antitrust violations. The new approach is a class action law suit being launched against individual MLB teams under the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) rather than challenging the antitrust legislation.

The FLSA generally requires that employees’ pay cannot fall below the minimum wage and that employees are owed overtime pay of one-and-a-half times the regular pay rate when working in excess of 40 hours per week. Minor league players routinely work between 60 and 70 hours per week, playing and working out six or seven days a week. Minor league players are not paid for participating in the instructional leagues or extended spring training and are not paid during the off-season, thus forcing many of them to take on menial (often minimum wage) jobs during the off-season just to get by.

The suit contends that players, current and former minor leaguers, are owed back wages for uncompensated and under-compensated labor. As you might imaging, the implications for the parent teams in the event of a successful suit are quite staggering.

To date multiple minor leaguers are now signed on as plaintiffs, and the teams for whom they played are now defendants: Royals, Marlins, Giants, Red Sox, Blue Jays, White Sox, Indians, Astros, Angels, Athletics, Mariners, Reds, Cardinals, Rockies, Padres, Twins and Nationals. The plan would seem to be to get players from every major league team to become part of the class action suit and thus to sue every franchise.

An interesting situation is developing. Usually legal challenges, class action suits in particular, take a long time to play out. If successful there may be unanticipated consequences for some minor league teams, such as some areas losing their teams entirely. But the focus now is on those players who are willing to risk everything, perhaps even their own major league careers, so that minor league players can earn a livable wage.

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If you’re going

It is quite common for local booster clubs of minor league baseball teams to ‘pass the hat’ whenever one of their team’s players hits a home run or one of their pitchers strike out the side. Every penny collected from fans is given directly to the player accomplishing these feats. In many cases, this is the only extra income these kids make on top of the minimal salaries. Please keep this in mind the next time you take in a minor league baseball game.