Minor Leaguers, Minor Wages, Major Problems

By Joseph Gentile.

Major League Baseball (“MLB”) and the Major League Baseball Players Association (“MLBPA”) recently came to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”), which will last through the 2021 MLB season. This means that, by the end of the next CBA, the MLB will have gone twenty-six consecutive seasons without a work stoppage.

The MLBPA represents players designated on the forty-man major league roster; so what does that mean for Minor League Baseball players who fell short of making the forty-man roster? Another year of making less than minimum wage.

Minor Leaguers are not entitled to minimum wage or overtime because of an exemption in Section 213 of the FLSA. It provides that minimum wage and overtime provisions do not apply to employees of an “amusement or recreational establishment” if the establishment does not operate more than seven months per year, or if the employer can prove that total revenue in one-half of the preceding year was less than one-third of the total revenue in the other half of the same preceding year.

At the lowest level of the Minor Leagues, players earn wages that amount to less than $4 per hour if players received their regular hourly wage for the first forty hours of the week and time-and-a-half for the remaining 20 hours. At the highest level of the Minor Leagues, players earn a salary that puts them barely above minimum wage.

Unionization is one possible way to combat this problem, but asking minor leaguers to pay union dues out of their already-miniscule salaries is asking a lot. Additionally, the ultimate goal of these minor leaguers is to get out of the Minor Leagues as quickly as possible, which makes it difficult to gain momentum in the effort to unionize Minor Leagues.

There have been efforts to unionize the Minor Leagues in the past, but no real progress was made. The only hope would be fore a large union to come in and organize, but the players are more likely to want to remain quiet while trying to advance to the Major Leagues. If a Major League team were to promote an advocate for Minor League unionization, it would surely cause more distractions than the Major League team may be willing to handle.

It seems as if Minor Leaguers will continue to earn less than minimum wage until MLB owners are ready to step in, which, unfortunately, does not seem likely to happen soon.

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