And just like that, after 120-years of infamously awful working conditions and compensation, minor league baseball has a union. 

On Wednesday, 14 September the appointed arbitrator verified that the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Players Association) had collected petitions approving the union from a majority of minor league players. The MLBPA is the player’s union that represents the interests of major league ballplayers. With the move to organize the minor leaguers, the MLBPA will boost its membership five-fold, from over 1,000 to over 6,000. 

Hump Day News previously reported on the launch of the union drive at the end of August. Industry observers speculated that a union drive targeting such a widely-dispersed population of potential members could take months, even years, to come together. And minor league players, with an average  stint of 2.5 years in the league, faced additional challenges related to organizing a movement within an industry with high turnover. 

As it turns out, the union drive needed only a couple of weeks to find success. The process could not have moved along so swiftly without the MLB indicating that it was willing to voluntarily recognize a unionized minor league without resorting to a further NLRB-refereed vote. Via the Athletic:

“We, I believe, notified the MLBPA today that we’re prepared to execute an agreement on voluntary recognition,” commissioner Rob Manfred said Friday afternoon at a press conference at MLB’s headquarters in Manhattan. “I think they’re working on the language as we speak.”

Voluntary recognition expedites the process by skipping the union vote among prospective members. The longer version of the unionizing process includes, in essence, two steps: (1) a petition to form a union, and (2) a vote to unionize or not. Over 30% approval is required in step (1) to proceed to step (2). Over 50% approval is required in step (2) to form the union. On the other hand, if there is sufficient support in step (1) among the workforce, the employer can simply recognize the union without involving the NLRB further. 

Although this shortened version of events has become rarer in labor organizing, it does happen. In situations where the workers complaints are sufficiently evidenced and/or the employer’s desire to avoid negative publicity sufficiently pronounced, the employer may elect to hasten the process. At a time when the public approval rate of unions is strong, an organization that relies on public goodwill, for patronage and legal perks like anti-trust exemption, might want to avoid the kind of ugly, protracted battles against its organizing employees that we’re seeing with Starbucks, Amazon, and the railway industry.

Once the minor leaguers are recognized as part of the collective bargaining unit represented by the MLBPA, negotiations for better compensation and working conditions can begin. The bargaining phase of the process will most certainly take longer than two weeks, but the procedural mechanism has been established for the players to reach their goal of more equitable contracts and the way is cleared to play ball.

David Zirin of the Nation reached out to labor historian Peter Rachleff for comment:

“The seemingly sudden unionization of 5,000 minor league baseball players is best understood as part and parcel of the impressive upsurge of organizing by workers who are securing the pandemic’s place as a compelling chapter in American labor history. In the 1930s, African American migrants from the South joined with the children of southern and eastern European immigrants to create industrial unions across basic industry. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the civil rights and women’s movements led working women and men in the formerly non-union public sector to discover the power and pleasure of collective organization. And now, in the past two and a half years, movements for racial justice and the protection of workers’ safety have inspired a new generation of workers to undertake organization from Starbucks coffee shops, retail bookstores, and museums to Amazon warehouses, Silicon Valley, and congressional staffs. Minor league baseball players, long underpaid, abused, and disrespected, are making their path into the labor movement and into the history books—and into a more stable and secure livelihood.”