This is the first installment of a series that highlights the history of labor struggles in Major League Baseball. It opens with the early years of attempted unionization and will continue into how the courts became involved, and how the MLB Players Association finally came to
This is the first installment of a series that highlights the history of labor struggles in Major League Baseball. It opens with the early years of attempted unionization and will continue into how the courts became involved, and how the MLB Players Association finally came to be. The series will give the reader insight into key labor issues and how they evolved over each successive Collective Bargaining Agreement up to the present.
The author is a retired attorney with a background in employment law. This series was born out of a particular interest in the intersection of Labor Law and Major League Baseball. It is designed to give the reader a background into how unionization came to be in baseball, and how the history has brought us, the fans, to this particular place and time in the ongoing struggle between players and owners.
The push and pull between those who do physical and/or mental exertion for wages (labor) and those who direct such physical and/or mental exertion (management) is a tale as old as time. Organizations of labor (unions) in the United States have existed since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Though most people associate labor unions with trades such as plumbers, electricians, etc., or plant or mine workers, unions can form in almost any business.
Sports unions, often called Players Associations, exist today in all of the major U.S. sports leagues. It was in major league baseball that the earliest known of such associations first sprang up. Though the sport of baseball dates back to before the Civil War in the U.S, “major league baseball”, as it is known today dates back to the early 1880s. The first league of professional baseball was the National League, which was founded in 1876 as a loose conglomeration of eight teams. The first rival organization, the American Association, came into being in 1882, and the two leagues began to play each other in 1884 in an early version of the World Series. Thus, major league baseball as a construct was born.
The earliest known association of major league baseball players was called the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players, formed in 1885, in protest of what was known as the “Reserve Clause”. This clause, which was inserted into the standard player uniform contract in the National League in 1879, was seen by league owners, or “magnates” as they were called, as a way to control player salaries and player movement from team to team. The Reserve Clause was essentially a list of five players per team that all the magnates agreed were forbidden to be signed by another team. The list began as a secret but was later inserted into the league rules. This list of five “reserved” players went to 11 and by 1887 was up to 14 players per team, which was essentially the entire roster.
The leader of the Brotherhood, as it was known, was the shortstop of the New York Giants, John Montgomery Ward. Ward’s first line of attack against the Reserve Clause was to liken it to slavery. Other demands by the Brotherhood included stopping a proposed salary classification system that capped player salaries and an end to the practice of selling players for cash.
The response by the league was to ignore the Brotherhood and hope it would collapse on its own. To the contrary, as the magnates held their ground, the membership of the Brotherhood increased. By the end of 1887, the players who were Brotherhood members refused to sign contracts for the 1888 season until the league recognized the Brotherhood and negotiated with them.
In the meantime, both sides waged a war in the sphere of public opinion. The Brotherhood painted a picture of the magnates as uninterested in maintaining the integrity of the game but only exploiting it for what profit they could get from it. The magnates for their part spread the notion that the Brotherhood was a secret society of un-American revolutionaries.
Eventually, however, the magnates recognized the Brotherhood and agreed to a meeting. Tensions cooled for a period of time, enough to allow the 1888 season to move forward. The détente didn’t last, and the magnates stoked the fires with the release of their plan for the players salary classification system, which the Brotherhood strongly opposed. The war was back on.
The Brotherhood’s response in the summer of 1889 was to announce plans for a new league, to be called the Players’ League. Members were sent out in their respective cities to find financial investors for the league. Many of the Brotherhood members were star players with enough clout to persuade potential backers and to generate fan interest in the new league as well.
The first order of business for the magnates was to make threats of legal action against the Brotherhood members who were reserved players to prevent them from going to the new league. A renewal of the war of public opinion saw the magnates accusing the players of being greedy and questioning the long-term viability of the new league. The magnates were aided to some degree by the media, who also questioned the viability of the league and its ability to attract younger players.
The magnates resorted to other tactics including offering some members of the Brotherhood huge salary increases in an effort to lure them back in order to weaken the Brotherhood’s efforts and furthe