Some of you may know that the MLB is currently in a labor dispute between the players and the owners. when looking at the dispute it can easily be dismissed as a case of millionaires vs billionaires. But I think that the negotiations are beneficial to the movement as a whole.
The things that the players are fighting for are in some ways similar to things that the workforce as a whole is fighting for. Baseball promotions are based on pretty much merit alone how good you perform dictates how much money you could earn. This merit system is good as you will earn the money you should. However, life doesn't work out like that, and just like you at your own workplace working harder and better than you are paid, Baseball's owners do everything they can do to keep the players from earning the money they are due.
One of the main points argued against in the negotiations is service time manipulation. With the minor league system in place in baseball players enter a sort of rat race trying to prove to coaches and owners that they are good enough and have progressed enough to play at the big league level. Service time is how many years a player has to be with the team that “owns” them before they can reach free agency, the financial goal of a player. Owners don’t want to pay the players the money they deserve so they keep them down in the minor leagues to keep control of them for longer and to pay them less for their services. Then they bring them up later in the season arguing they were not ready at the beginning of the year because they didn’t play a full year, another year of control and paying the player less is secured for the team.
Another big thing that the Players are arguing for is the betterment of the minor leagues, this may be a little more relatable than service time manipulation. The life of a minor league ball player is not good. The facilities are bad, their pay is bad and their living conditions are not good at all. They deal with many of the problems that lower income families deal with all while trying to maintain at the very tippy top of physical condition. Furthermore they don’t get paid during the off season and the meager earnings they have saved during the season forces them to get jobs during the offseason which is often hard because jobs don’t want workers who only work for around 5 months of the year. Plus again they need to be training and getting better trying to achieve their goal of reaching the big leagues. The players are fighting for better living conditions and pay for minor leaguers as well as support in the offseason for players.
The players have only been able to bring these topics to negotiation because of their strong union, sticking together and fighting for what they want in their jobs. Even the biggest stars fight for the average player who will grind for years to not even sniff the big leagues. Unionizing is important and I think if the MLB Players Union can win big in the lockout this should be able to catalyze a shift in philosophy for workers around the world to unionize and fight back against the exploitation of the working class.