Major League Baseball hit with wage and hour class action
Minor league baseball players filed a class action lawsuit against Major League Baseball (MLB). The plaintiffs allege that MLB benefits financially from the current minor league system in which most players never make it to the major leagues.
Their claim for damages? Plaintiffs claim minor leaguers are paid illegally low wages. Plaintiffs state they are paid less than minimum wage and are not compensated for overtime work or training work in the off-season.
Kat Greene states in her article that salary data for minor league players is not publicly available, but that the plaintiffs contend that players are compensated as little as $1,100 to $2,150 per month.
In a USA Today article, Ted Berg provided a historical context, reporting that the Major league union negotiated collective bargaining agreements in 1968. The minor leaguers did not, and their salaries have increased 75% since 1976, in contrast to 400% inflation. Berg noted that no active players are involved in the suit “because suing your team is not the best route to the Majors.”
According to statistical expert Dwight Steward, Ph.D, many wage and hour lawsuits are based on wage and personnel information that simply does not exist. In his article ‘Measuring the plaintiff’s unmeasured work in wage and hour lawsuits‘, Steward explains that “[u]nlike other employment disputes that often revolve around the interpretation of a measurable statistical disparity between employees, allegations in wage and hour cases are centered around employee work effort that is generally unmeasured by the employer.”
A Mets’ union representative, Curtis Granderson, explained that “[e]ven though clocked hours are considered game-time hours, there are still a lot more things that go into work. If you are only working between the start of the game and the end of the game, you’re probably going to end up without a job.”
MLB released a statement saying that minor league players are paid in compliance with the law, since minimum wage and overtime laws are not intended to apply to professional athletes. Josh Leventhal reported that Minor League Baseball’s vice president announced that he will petition Congress to officially add minor league players to the list of occupations not entitled to minimum wage or overtime pay. He said that “playing minor league baseball was never intended to be a career.”
Leventhal notes that if MLB loses this fight, former minor league players will win hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay, and current and future players would received higher wages. This would drastically change American baseball.
The case is scheduled for trial in February 2017.
