Fair Play for Minor League Baseball
February 5, 2018Archives . Authors . Blog News . Certified Review . Feature . Feature Img . Recent Stories . Student Blogs . Uncategorized ArticlePeople are often quick to criticize professional athletes for the amount of money they make. And within the world of professional sports, baseball players often make more money than their peers in other professional sports. Some of the reasons for this, as some have pointed out, are that Major League Baseball (MLB) has no salary cap, the MLB has a strong players’ union, and sports agents wield a tremendous amount of power.
Compared to other major American sports, Major League Baseball also cultivates talent in a unique way. In the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL), professional teams typically recruit players from college. In the National Hockey League (NHL), there are minor league teams, but there are numerous leagues, and individual teams do not have contractual control over all players on the team. In baseball, however, virtually the only way that a player reaches the MLB is by progressing through Minor League Baseball (MiLB). MLB teams typically exercise control over 3-5 MiLB teams, and the MiLB teams have contractual control over all of their players. This level of control has led to unequal bargaining power that teams have over their players, which has not only resulted in MiLB players being paid remarkably less than their peers in the MLB, but even less than others in a variety of entry-level jobs.
MiLB players are guaranteed only $1,100 per month, compared to MLB players, whose minimum pay is $84,000 per month. $1,100 per month “works out to less than $4 an hour if they were being paid straight time for the first 40 hours of work a week, plus 20 hours a week of OT at time-and-a-half.”
Further, MiLB players make less than the federal minimum wage, do not collect overtime pay, and only make money during the season, meaning that the expenses for any work they do to prepare for the season comes out of their pockets directly. MiLB is also exempt from federal antitrust laws, “which are designed to protect trade and commerce from unlawful restraints or monopolies.”
In the MiLB, players are often traded between different teams, and often, a single MLB team’s various MiLB teams are located in different states. Therefore, it would be difficult for MiLB players to rely on individual state laws for a fair minimum wage. In a national sport, where players are constantly traveling between states across the United States, the federal minimum wage becomes crucially important for the employees to survive. And unlike the MLB, MiLB players do not have a union which can advocate for better wages on behalf of the players.
In response to these issues, minor league players filed a class action lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit against MLB (Aaron Senne, et al v. Kansas City Royals Baseball Co, et al), posing the question “Are defendants required under wage-and-hour laws to compensate minor league professional baseball players?” There are two other class-action lawsuits which have been filed in Arizona and Florida to address the same issue. Hopefully, the courts will find that MiLB players deserve to, at a minimum, qualify for the federal minimum wage, and only time will tell whether MiLB will receive any sort of parity with what MLB players make.
Suggested citation: Mason Roth, Fair Play for Minor League Baseball, Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol’y, The Issue Spotter, (Feb. 5, 2018), https://live-journal-of-law-and-public-policy.pantheonsite.io/fair-play-for-minor-league-baseball/.
You may also like
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- November 2023
- October 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- April 2019
- February 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- August 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- June 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010