Durbin Introduces Fair Ball Act To Shore Up Labor Protections For Minor League Baseball Players

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced the Fair Ball Act, which would roll back the current broad exemption from federal wage and hour laws for Minor League Baseball players provided by the inaptly named Save America’s Pastime Act (SAPA) and replace it with a narrowly tailored exemption that would only apply if the players are being compensated pursuant to the terms of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). If the players are not covered by a CBA, then they would have the same federal wage protections as all other workers.

In 2018, Major League Baseball (MLB) successfully lobbied for SAPA in order to shield itself from a class-action lawsuit, which alleged that MLB and its teams violated federal and state wage and hour laws, by arguing that SAPA would protect Minor League teams from being contracted.  Two years later, MLB nonetheless contracted dozens of Minor League Baseball teams.

“Workers deserve a fair playing field everywhere—including in baseball. Executives at MLB lobbied Congress hard for federal wage and hour law exemptions in order to avoid legal liability with the 2018 Save America’s Pastime Act.  While I commend MLB for voluntarily recognizing the unionization of Minor League Baseball players in 2022, it is time to rollback SAPA in deference to the gains made by that historic unionization. I’m proud to stand with these workers, unions, and the integrity of the sport. I stand ready to pass the Fair Ball Act into law,”said Durbin.

Specifically, the legislation would help protect Minor League players and the gains they have made to earn a living wage as a result of their historic unionization under the Major League Baseball Players Association in 2022 and subsequent CBA with MLB. It would do this by ensuring MLB has a continued interest in maintaining a CBA—which would trigger the exemption from federal wage and hour laws for Minor League players in deference to the CBA—and would prevent MLB from using SAPA’s broad exemption as leverage during the next round of CBA negotiations.

In addition to Durbin, the legislation is sponsored by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR). The legislation is endorsed by the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and the National Employment Law Project.

“For generations, Minor League Players’ working conditions were indefensible,” said MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark. “This indignity was compounded by the perversely named ‘Save America’s Pastime Act’ -- a law that was enacted to save money, not baseball, by depriving Minor Leaguers of a minimum wage. By narrowing the Act so that it applies only when players are protected by a CBA, the Fair Ball Act is a win not just for Minor Leaguers, but for the institution of collective bargaining as a whole.  The MLBPA strongly supports Senator Durbin’s bill and we thank him for his work on behalf of Players.”

In the absence of the proposed, narrowly tailored exemption and without a CBA, minor league players would be vulnerable to SAPA’s effects, which could result in players earning less than $8,000 per season or about 40 percent of the minimum annual salary a player makes under the current CBA, not including additional benefits.

Full text of the bill is available here.

Last year, Durbin and a group of Senators pressed Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of the MLB, on its lobbying for a broad wage and hour exemption at the same time it was negotiating its CBA with MLBPA. This follows Durbin leading a letter to Advocates for Minor Leaguers, asking about the impact of MLB’s antitrust exemption on competition in the labor market for Minor League players. In July 2022, Durbin sent a similar letter to Commissioner Manfred.

These letters played a role in pushing MLB to recognize the unionization of Minor League Baseball players under the umbrella of the MLBPA in September 2022.

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