Baseball players union announces affiliation with AFL-CIO at Club event

The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) has formally affiliated with the umbrella union organization AFL-CIO.

Leaders of the two groups made the announcement Wednesday at a National Press Club Headliners Newsmakers event. (The full announcement and Q&A can be seen on the Club website or on YouTube.  The announcement starts approximately 16 minutes into the recording.)

 

"The MLBPA has a proud, 56-year history of success rooted in unity and a highly engaged membership," said its executive director, former ballplayer Tony Clark. "We look forward to bringing that history to bear as a more formal part of the [labor] movement."

Clark was joined at the event by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, who welcomed Clark and the players' union to her organization.

Triggering discussions about joining the labor federation, said Clark, was Major League Baseball's contraction of the number of official minor league teams and the cancellation of all year 2020 minor league games because of COVID-19. 

MLBPA recently sent union authorization cards to more than 5,000 minor league baseball players and within a week received back "thousands" of signed cards, Clark said.  He said Major League Baseball has been asked to voluntarily recognize the bargaining unit, although that has not yet happened.  Clark said he did not know if the league would insist on a formal government-monitored election by the minor leaguers.

Calling the minor leagues the "backbone" of the baseball industry, Clark noted that through Advocates for Minor Leaguers, a separate operation now affiliated with the MLBPA, the minor league players have found that their voice is different from what it had been, as they seek higher wages and additional health and safety protections from the team owners.  "Unionization can change that," said Shuler.

She said throughout all industries young people are "waking up" to the idea that unionization is the way to go.

In response to a Club member question read by the event's moderator, former NPC President Jonathan Salant, Clark said that if the minor league bargaining unit is recognized members would initially be charged "minimal dues if at all."

Clark was asked if affiliation with the AFL-CIO would mean that MLB players would refuse to cross a picket line at a baseball stadium -- if, for example, a team's union concession workers or cleaning crews went on strike. He said the current MLB collective bargaining agreement prohibits that. He added that was "unlikely" that the MLBPA would takes sides in partisan politics.