Sen. Dick Durbin plans to introduce the Honest Ball Act, a invoice that might additional defend minor league baseball gamers from earlier laws that exempted them from wage and hour legal guidelines, sources advised ESPN on Wednesday.
Within the invoice, Durbin (D-Illinois), who has been an outspoken advocate for minor league gamers and is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, promotes rolling again the exemption granted by the Save America’s Pastime Act (SAPA), whose inclusion in a 2018 spending invoice allowed groups to keep away from abiding by the Honest Labor Requirements Act.
Ought to the Honest Ball Act go, gamers can be entitled to minimal wage and time beyond regulation legal guidelines within the absence of a collective bargaining settlement.
Minor league gamers, who unionized with the Main League Baseball Gamers Affiliation in September 2022, struck a take care of MLB on a collective bargaining settlement in March 2023 and drastically elevated salaries and advantages after years of beneath minimal wage pay.
“Employees deserve a good taking part in area in every single place — together with in baseball,” Durbin stated in a press release. “Executives at MLB lobbied Congress laborious for federal wage and hour regulation exemptions so as to keep away from authorized legal responsibility with the 2018 Save America’s Pastime Act. Whereas I commend MLB for voluntarily recognizing the unionization of Minor League Baseball gamers in 2022, it’s time to roll again SAPA in deference to the positive factors made by that historic unionization. I am proud to face with these employees, unions and the integrity of the game. I stand able to go the Honest Ball Act into regulation.”
MLB declined remark when reached by ESPN.
The remedy of minor leaguers led to a class-action lawsuit in 2014 by gamers, who argued that MLB groups had run afoul of labor legal guidelines. Two years later, SAPA was launched by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Kentucky) to exempt MLB groups from having to pay minimal wage to gamers, who made as little as $1,000 per thirty days and had been paid throughout the season solely. Whereas SAPA by no means gained traction in Congress, its language was included in a spending invoice handed in 2018.
The unionization of the minor leagues lifted minimal salaries, starting from $19,800 per 12 months for gamers at groups’ complexes (beforehand $4,800) to $35,800 at Triple-A (beforehand $17,500). MLB later agreed to pay $185 million to settle the class-action lawsuit.
“For generations, minor league gamers’ working situations had been indefensible,” MLBPA govt director Tony Clark stated in a press release. “This indignity was compounded by the perversely named Save America’s Pastime Act — a regulation that was enacted to economize, not baseball, by depriving minor leaguers of a minimal wage. By narrowing the act in order that it applies solely when gamers are protected by a CBA, the Honest Ball Act is a win not only for minor leaguers, however for the establishment of collective bargaining as an entire.”
The contraction of greater than 40 minor league groups earlier than the 2021 season and previous remedy of gamers proceed to resonate, and the Honest Ball Act — which can be being sponsored by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and Peter Welch (D-Vermont) — is meant to maintain MLB from utilizing SAPA as a leverage level throughout negotiations after the minor league settlement expires following the 2027 season.
The present session of Congress ends Jan. 3, 2025, and with judicial appointments, a spending invoice and catastrophe support among the many present legislative priorities, the Honest Ball Act may very well be pushed to the following session or, like SAPA, folded into a bigger invoice.
“What made the Save America’s Pastime Act so dangerous, is it was Exhibit A for the way American politics mustn’t work,” Garrett Broshuis, a former minor league participant and lawyer who filed the antitrust swimsuit, advised ESPN. “It did not have a committee listening to. It was snuck in on web page 1,967 of the invoice at nighttime of night time. Many of the congressmen and congresswomen did not realize it was in there after they had been voting for it. It was an instance of wealthy folks getting particular remedy on the expense of their employees.
“This chance to slender that exemption is overdue, and I commend Sen. Durbin, the MLBPA and all of the others who’ve been engaged on this.”
