NEW YORK (AP) — The Major League Baseball Players Association is attempting to unionize minor leaguers, reversing decades of opposition.
The players’ association said Monday it is circulating union authorization cards among players with minor league contracts to form a separate bargaining unit from the big leaguers.
While the average major league salary is above $4 million, players with minor league contracts earn as little as $400 a week during the six-month season.
“The working conditions facing these players have been nothing short of offensive,” union head Tony Clark wrote in a letter Sunday to player agents. “Poverty wages, oppressive reserve rules, discipline without due process, ever-expanding offseason obligations, appropriation of intellectual property, substandard attention to player health and safety, and a chronic lack of respect for minor leaguers as a whole (to name just a few) — these cancers on our game exist because minor league players have never had a seat at the bargaining table. It’s time for that to change.”
The union’s executive board unanimously approved the minor league initiative on Friday.