Jonathan Tenca/Cal Sport Media via AP Images
Syracuse Mets outfielder Carlos Rincon takes an at bat against the Rochester Red Wings, April 30, 2022, at Frontier Field in Rochester, New York.
America’s pastime has completed nearly one month of regular-season play, and getting even this far was not easy. When the teams locked out their players last December, following the expiration of the previous collective-bargaining agreement, it wasn’t clear whether any Major League Baseball games would take place in 2022.
On March 10, however, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the owners ratified a new agreement and ended the 99-day work lockout. In the compromise the two sides reached, the players won some important gains, including a minimum annual salary of $700,000.
The story for minor league players, though, is very different. Last fall, the nonprofit Advocates for Minor Leaguers shared a video of a minor league baseball player sleeping in his car. The player was an employee of the Chicago Cubs, a major league team recently valued at nearly $4 billion, and a member of the “farm system” in a league that reported nearly $11 billion in revenue in 2019. How could he be working and living in such brutal conditions and squalor?
The answer lies in a unique and unjust facet of American law: baseball’s antitrust exemption.
For minor league baseball players, the promise of fair competition for their services doesn’t exist at all—not even in theory.
Federal antitrust laws prohibit employers from colluding to set wages or to restrict worker mobility. These laws should be understood to promise workers the power that comes from being able to shop among employers for decent wages and treatment. Unfortunately, for too many workers in the United States, this has been a false promise. Contractual restraints on workers’ right to seek out better work, such as noncompete agreements, are ubiquitous for workers up and down the wage scale. Many are stuck working for powerful corporations that drive down wages and gobble up competitors that might, in theory, pay more. Employer collusion over the terms and conditions of employment also persists, due in part to weak public enforcement and forced arbitration clauses that prevent workers from bringing their own lawsuits.
But for minor league baseball players, the promise of fair competition for their services doesn’t exist at all—not even in theory. Thanks to a series of Supreme Court cases going back to 1922, baseball is broadly exempt from antitrust law. The decisions that generated the exemption are antiquated and illogical. No other sports league has been granted a similar exemption, and last year, a unanimous Supreme Court suggested that baseball’s exemption is “unrealistic,” “inconsistent,” and “aberration[al].” Nevertheless, the Court has left it to Congress to address the issue.
Congress did just that for major league players in the Curt Flood Act of 1998, but the game’s exemption was otherwise left in place. Today, minor league baseball players labor under systematic employer collusion, thanks to the industry’s unique antitrust exemption. And unlike their major league counterparts, they do not have a union to challenge the power of team owners.
For tens of thousands of minor leaguers, the consequences have been dire. MLB team owners collude openly to suppress wages and limit player mobility in the minor leagues for their own financial benefit. In 2021, minor league player salaries averaged between $8,000 and $14,000 for the year, keeping many players below the federal poverty line. These salaries are set forth in the “uniform player contract” that all minor league players sign upon being drafted. The contract also keeps players trapped with the same team for seven seasons, with no possibility of seeking playing opportunities for clubs that would pay them more or treat them better. A significant portion of these indentured workers are immigrants or people of color.
The collusive exploitation of minor leaguers is antithetical to the ideals of a fair and equitable economic system. As President Biden stated in his July 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, “the American promise of a broad and sustained prosperity depends on an open and competitive economy.” To that end, the Biden administration committed to strong enforcement of antitrust laws against powerful corporations, especially in labor markets, to protect the “economic freedom to switch jobs or negotiate a higher wage.” Accordingly, the Department of Justice, breaking with its long-standing indifference toward unfair employer practices, has brought a series of criminal indictments against managers at rival employers for conspiring to cap their workers’ wages or not to recruit each other’s staff.
With the president’s resounding call to enforce the American antitrust laws to protect workers, the time is ripe to eliminate the baseball antitrust exemption. Sen. Bernie Sanders has recognized the injustice of this immunity for baseball’s owners. In March, he introduced a bill to repeal the exemption, which he said would attract bipartisan support. No employer should be able to keep employees trapped in a job making poverty wages by colluding with their competitors. It is time for MLB oligarchs to be subject to the same antitrust laws as other businesses. Only then can America’s pastime finally start to live up to the American promise.
