America’s next big labor battle could be Minor League Baseball
When the Major League Baseball Players Association sent union authorization cards to approximately 5,000 minor league players in an attempt to unionize them, I was both surprised and not surprised at all.
If any industry is crying out for unionization, it’s this one. Minor league baseball players are subject to some of the poorest wages and most dreadful working conditions in America. Most of them toil for years before being washed out of the game without ever having reached the promised land of the big leagues.
On the other hand, as someone who has written about baseball’s labor history, I’ve noticed how nobody seemed to care all that much about minor leaguers until relatively recently.