photo: Tony Clark (Denny Medley/USA TODAY Sports)
January 7 news item from Forbes: MLB Sees Record Revenues of $10.3 Billion For 2018
As many baseball fans already know, compensation for Major Leaguers – as well as drug policy and many other job-related matters – are collectively bargained between ownership and the MLB Players Association (MLBPA), led by Tony Clark.
However, these same privileges are not extended to minor leaguers, which of course, every member of the MLBPA was in the not-too-distant past.
The issue
Because of this lack of representation, minor league player salaries remain shockingly low.
As a reminder, each Major League Baseball club pays the salaries of the players as well as managers, coaches and trainers who staff their minor league affiliates, which currently total around 250, about 160 of which are revenue-generating. Player salaries scale downward from Triple-A, where monthly pay, only given during the season, averages about $2,150, per Lexology.
“Most players in the minor leagues are paid less than $7,500 for the entire year,” an advocate for minor league players told Forbes in March. “Even in Double-A–two steps from the major leagues–most guys are making wages that put them below the federal poverty guidelines.
“And regardless of the level, players are not paid during spring training; in essence they are required to work for 50+ hours per week for free. That should not happen in any industry, much less a $12 billion industry.”
Signing bonuses irrelevant
Some are familiar with seven-figure signing bonuses received by top draft picks and big-name international signees. These are the few exceptions, with the vast majority of players having received small one-time four-figure bonuses that may soon be gone.
For example, Peoria Chiefs player Yariel Gonzalez told the Peoria Journal-Star that his signing bonus was $1,000, leaving him with just $700 after taxes. Many minor leaguers at the lower levels live with local host families, who open up their homes to ballplayers who would have trouble making ends meet otherwise.
At the upper levels of the minors, it is not uncommon for a half-dozen players to jam into a small apartment, sleeping on air mattresses. Off-season jobs are a must for many – cutting into their time to prepare for baseball.
Gaining legal protection
Against a background of class-action suits filed seeking to secure minor league players minimum wage and overtime rights, MLB and MiLB alike successfully lobbied members of Congress to provide cover.
MLB spent $1,320,000 for lobbying in both 2016 and 2017, according to OpenSecrets.org and shared by Forbes. That represented an increase of nearly $1 million increase from 2015, when MLB’s lobbying efforts totaled just $330,000.
Minor League Baseball President Pat O’Conner was among those who warned that without protection, minor league teams and entire leagues could be closed down due to increased labor costs, as reported by Baseball America. With that fear cast over their head, is there any doubt that legislators would not want to be perceived as being responsible for shuttering their local minor league club?
Through a review of minor league salaries, Major League Baseball determined that a loss in one of the pending court cases would have cost it approximately $110 million collectively (without penalties) for the period of 2011-2014, per Forbes.
So, can a $10.3 billion business afford another $27.5 million per year of expense to do what appears to be right? That would work out to approximately $920,000 annually per MLB team, or about what relief pitcher Chasen Shreve will make for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2019.
The law
First introduced in the 2015-2016 legislative period, the Save America’s Pastime Act (SAPA) was included in a Federal spending bill passed by Congress on March 2, 2018 and signed into law later that month by President Trump. It supports the classification of minor league players as seasonal employees, exempt from wage and overtime law stipulated in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA).
The SAPA states:
“[a]ny employee employed to play baseball who is compensated pursuant to a contract that provides for a weekly salary for services performed during the league’s championship season (but not on spring training or the off season) at a rate that is not less than a weekly salary equal to the minimum wage under section 6(a) for a workweek of 40 hours, irrespective of the number of hours the employee devotes to baseball related activities.”
SAPA does require players be paid minimum wage for 40 hours a week during the regular season, about $290 per week, per Lexology. However, players are not eligible for overtime, nor will they be paid during spring training or other special camps, same as under the prior system.
The rub is that during the season, players are working six or seven days a week with extensive work travel required that extends their mandatory time commitment far beyond 40 hours. Off-season preparation is also exempt.
While it has been estimated that pay increased at the lowest levels of the minors, where the minimum salary was previously $1,100 per month, the SAPA did not result in raises for the vast majority of minor league players.
A legal interpretation
I asked a lawyer familiar with the issues to explain.
“The basic argument with respect to the Fair Labor Standards Act is whether minor leaguers are exempt from minimum wage laws because they are seasonal employees,” the attorney said.
“The counter to that is that they are only seasonal employees if they do nothing in furtherance of their employment duties outside the season. Of course, they do, and the teams expect them to conduct baseball activities in the offseason to get ready for the season. Thus, that makes them not seasonal employees, in my opinion.
“MLB’s chances of winning on the seasonal employee exemption were questionable. The legislation guaranteed the result they wanted without the court fights they could lose,” the lawyer concluded.
What is next?
While this matter is gaining more attention nationally, the law is now clearly on the side of ownership. Public shaming of MLB, while well-intended, will have no effect.
The only way I can see for the situation to change would be if Clark and the Players Association step up to represent and protect their next generation – their minor league brethren – including the majority who will never earn the minimum salary of $555,000 in the big leagues, but want to keep trying to achieve their dream.
However, given where this matter likely stands on their priority list should not create optimism that help is on the way.
After the Save America’s Pastime Act was enacted into law, Clark said the right words, but that is all they were.
“We stand shoulder to shoulder with the minor league players and the labor community in opposing this legislation,” Clark wrote in an email shared by the AP in late March 2018.
If the Players Association took any action to try to stop the SAPA during the years of MLB lobbying beforehand, I can find no public record of it. Now that it is law, will they do anything to try to get it repealed?
Bottom line: If the players will not aid each other, why would anyone else?
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Brian Walton can be reached via email at brian@thecardinalnation.com. Follow Brian on Twitter.
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