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And yes, baseball's union battles look like many others: the big, fat-cat bosses versus the union on which their trade relies. In just about any other case, you'd be able to side "living wage" activists and liberals with the union, and conservatives and free marketeers with the owners in their fight against overpaying for labor. But baseball's union isn't like most others. Regardless of reflexive ideological corners, in baseball, the players — and the union — are the allies of capitalism. In 1975, a one-sided, anti-free market rule called the "reserve clause" effectively met its end. The clause had given teams the option to unilaterally extend a player's contract once it expired, provided that the player was under contract with the team before. In essence, players were bound to the same team for life. But with Miller's guidance, the clause would be redefined. Teams could no longer exercise this option for perpetuity. Instead, owners were granted absolute control over a player's career for a certain amount of time. After that, a player would be free to seek a new contract with whatever team he wished. With this change, free agency began. And since then, owners have worked tirelessly to restrict player movement and market solutions as much as possible. Allen Barra of the hardly conservative Salon emphasizes this: "What are the issues involved in this year's labor problems? Exactly the same ones that have been involved in every work stoppage since 1972. And every single one of those stoppages was preceded by the owners' making new demands of the players — demands that would restrict their hard-won right to free agency — while the players were prepared to accept the status quo." This latest impasse is more of the same. The number-one issue at hand is commonly referred to as a "luxury tax," which the players are unlikely to accept. The owners want to impose a 50% tax on payrolls in excess of $98 million. If such a tax were to go in effect, a team with a $120 million payroll would put an additional $11 million into the pool. All money in that pool would be divided up among all 30 teams. It doesn't take Milton Friedman to realize that those in favor of the tax probably aren't on the side of a free market. But it's even worse than that. Although the teams see it mainly as a means toward effective revenue sharing, it's also a salary cap in disguise. If a team can afford a $120 million payroll, they'll spend at most that much. If that gets them $120 million worth of players (as it would now), fine. But if that tax is put into place, that same team can spend only about $113 million toward salaries — the other $7 would go into the pot. It's a salary cap that teams can exceed, but only at exorbitant costs. Outside of George Steinbrenner's Yankees, it is unlikely that any of the teams will go over the cap by more than a few million dollars. Why do owners want this cap in place? To rein in their own overspending. Teams regularly drop millions on long-term contracts for overrated and over-the-hill veterans. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, for example, have almost $17 million promised to Wilson Alvarez (6.32 ERA) and Greg Vaughn (.163 batting average and 82 strikeouts in 69 games). Bud Selig's Brewers — currently in the NL basement — have spent $7.5 million on career-.278 hitter Jeffrey Hammonds and another $5 million on utility infielder Mark Loretta. In essence, the owners are overspending. And they want the players to take the responsibility. There's one other way owners, collectively, want to rein in salaries: eliminate jobs. While the NFL is expanding (to Cleveland a few years ago, Houston this year, perhaps L.A. in the near future) and the NBA is relocating a team from Charlotte to New Orleans, baseball is ready to "contract" away the Expos and Twins. The elimination of these two teams would remove 50 jobs on the field. And it's being billed as a Darwinian, free-market solution — a team that is unfit simply can't survive. But why not relocate a team to D.C.? There are NBA and NFL teams established in the beltway. Why doesn't the Expos owner — yes, the team is league-owned, another statist solution — relocate the team to more fertile ground? Well, unlike the other two sports, baseball is exempt from anti-trust laws. The owners can, acting as one, prohibit team movement. In fact, it's this anti-trust exemption that gives the owners just about all their power. It makes a players' strike the only way the union can fight the ownership. If the owners do not get their way, they can lockout the players, shutting down their industry, and, provided they prove to the National Labor Relations Board that negotiations are at an impasse, they can impose their terms by fiat. It'd be like GM, Ford, et al saying they are going to close up shop until all auto-workers took a 20% pay cut. If one company did this, fine — competitors would snatch away the idle laborers, and the idle company would suffer immensely. (That's probably why lockouts in non-sports industries are incredibly uncommon.) But when all the companies collude — or all the owners, as in baseball — there's nowhere to go. And no harm done to the owners. The players have little choice: sign on the dotted line or don't come back. And ballplayers can't make much green hitting cork and rubber 400 feet in the real world. Or they one other option: walk out. Fearing a strike this year, Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus writes: "The players are considering striking for one reason, and one reason only: it's their only option. A strike between now and September 29 is their only chance to put pressure on ownership to take a reasonable position in negotiations. If they play the season and the postseason without an agreement," the union is handing all the leverage to Selig (and by extention, the owners) — a man they have no reason to trust. But the devastation done to the game by a strike could be catastrophic, even if the onus should fall on the owners. Ignoring the fans — the third, often unmentioned party in labor impasses — is a mistake neither the players nor owners can afford to make. The players have their hands tied, and the owners should step up to the plate: Take responsibility for out-of-control salaries. End the calls for contraction and salary caps. Address real, market-friendly revenue-sharing solutions. Promise there won't be a lockout. This will remove the players' incentive to strike. Yes, there will still be issues to resolve, and in the end, the union will capitulate to a demand or two. And, as they have in the past, the players will agree to anti-capitalist ideas like salary arbitration or an increase in straight-pooled revenue sharing. They'll get knocked around for giving in while claiming to be the flag bearers of the free market, but the details shouldn't blur the line between right and wrong. — Dan Lewis is a writer for BootlegSports.com. He runs a sports weblog at www.dlewis.net. |
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Major League Baseball players union began in 1966 when their first executive
director, Marvin Miller, was recruited by pitcher (and now Hall of Famer)
Robin Roberts. In his book, A Whole Different Ball Game, Miller
recounts an early admission by Roberts: the idea of a union wasn't a very
popular one, even among the players, for political reasons. Writes Miller,
quoting Roberts, "Most players are conservative. They don't know
anything about unions. In fact, to many, especially guys from small towns
down south, 'union' is a dirty word."
