Tag: MLBPA CBA

The Fair Ball Act would close an exploitable loophole

A collective bargaining agreement between MLB and its minor leaguers only goes as far as federal and state exemptions allow it to.

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Minor league baseball players might have unionized in the fall of 2022, leading to their first-ever collective bargaining agreement early the next year, but that alone isn’t enough. This was obvious at the time, as, even while MLB was at the bargaining table with the Players Association, the former was trying to support an exemption that would allow them to a CBA workaround in Florida — one that would have let them avoid adhering to the state’s minimum wage laws.

Here’s what I said at the time about that, in March of 2023:

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MLB is ready to cancel games over labor dispute, unless they’re not

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MLB and the MLBPA met on consecutive days this week, which sounds like it’ll be the norm for a bit as the two try to work through bargaining issues without putting entire weeks in between sessions again. Reports on the meetings ranged from the discovery that Dick Monfort put his foot in his mouth so hard on day one that he wasn’t medically cleared to attend day two, to the players being angry at not just Monfort’s crying poor, but MLB’s clear plan of pretending their awful offers were magnanimous instead of making bad situations worse, and MLB Network’s Jon Heyman tweeting that “it’s good they’re talking” as he “reported” on salary numbers I covered in this space nearly two weeks ago.

There’s quite a bit to cover from these two days of meetings, and I will certainly be doing so between now and whenever the next sessions end up being. First, though, let’s take a look at a specific report, courtesy of The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, the meaning of which MLB is already saying we’re all misinterpreting.

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