Nathan Congleton
For decades, being a minor league baseball player meant living a nightmare of poverty wages and substandard conditions. Given that the average major league baseball salary is $4.4 million, and profit margins for the bosses are off the charts—thanks to regional cable television contracts and the churn of publicly funded stadiums—the pauperism of minor league players has been a national disgrace discussed in baseball circles for years.
But the wheels may finally be turning, thanks to the power of grassroots organizing. On August 29, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) declared—at long last—that it would organize minor league players into a union. In a statement, MLBPA Executive Director and former major league player Tony Clark said, “Minor leaguers represent our game’s future and deserve wages and working conditions that befit elite athletes who entertain millions of baseball fans nationwide. They’re an important part of our fraternity, and we want to help them achieve their goals, both on and off the field.”
Less than two weeks later, on September 9, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that MLB would voluntarily recognize the MLBPA as the union for minor leaguers. This is what you do when you know that you have been defeated.
There is still much work to do. The average annual salary for the 5,000 athletes who play minor league baseball in a given season is between $5,000 and $14,000. That is not enough to make ends meet, so many players must find other work during the off-season, sometimes taking on two or three jobs. Their living conditions are challenging, and some even live in their cars.
The plight of these players has gotten major publicity in recent years, thanks to the work of advocacy organizations formed by these athletes and their allies. Earlier this year, current and former minor league players won a $185 million settlement from the MLB in a class-action lawsuit over violations of minimum wage and overtime laws. Additionally, the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee has indicated that it will hold hearings to examine MLB’s long-standing antitrust exemption—in place since 1922—and its treatment of minor league players.
“Players across the minor leagues are ready to fight for the respect, fairness, and dignity they deserve.”
I reached out to Simon Rosenblum-Larson, a player who was recently released from the minor leagues and who co-founded More Than Baseball, an organization that supports the players and seeks to be “the global police of inequities and support for the game of baseball.” He tells The Progressive, “Given the abysmal working conditions in the sport, it’s obvious that minor leaguers have desperately needed a union for a long time. This effort is the culmination of a grassroots movement in the sport that goes back years.”
Rosenblum-Larson says that when he was drafted in 2018, players “rarely talked about the poor working conditions, much less a union.” Since then, they have organized. “We have built on-the-ground networks of solidarity, and ballplayers have spoken out, saying enough is enough to the poverty-level wages, the exploitative contract structure, and the hundreds of hours of unpaid work they’re forced into.”
He adds that the union campaign “is a long time coming, but it comes at a moment when players across the minor leagues are ready to fight for the respect, fairness, and dignity they deserve as some of the best athletes in the world.”
The arrogance and greed of major league ownership and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is coming back to bite them. At the time of this writing, in early September, the commissioner and the owners are keeping quiet about the unionization efforts. It’s a good time to ask the question: “Who has the best interests of the game of baseball at heart?”
It reminds me of the common refrain for teachers’ unions: “Our working conditions are your children’s learning conditions.” The working conditions of minor league baseball players—who provide us with endless entertainment, across the country and the world—are abysmal. We don’t pay to watch the owner’s box, as the adage goes. It’s time to start treating minor league players right, even if it is at the expense of the owners.