A Minor Inconvenience?

As a resident of a Triple A city, I may be more attuned to minor league baseball issues than the average sports fan. Still, it’s been hard to notice this spring that minor league umpires are on strike. The Union negotiating team reached agreement with the leagues on a 12% pay raise for umpires, which the union rank-and-file rejected. Sure, a 12% pay raise probably sounds pretty good to most of us. But even the highest paid Triple A umpires make just $3400 a month for a five-month season (which I’m fairly sure puts them at or close the poverty line). While there might be opportunities for off-season employment, they can’t be all that lucrative or meaningful.

But the really striking thing about the minor league umpires’ strike is how little it has affected the season to date. Unlike law professors, who won’t cross hotel worker picket lines to have their annual conference in San Francisco, minor league baseball fans haven’t stayed away from stadiums to show solidarity, although some have picketed. While I’m guessing major league umpires couldn’t legally strike in solidarity (the major league umps have expressed support), they could be open to attempting to redefine their own bargaining unit to include minor league umps.

Unlike when players go on strike, the minor leagues seem perfectly willing (and financial able) to continue operations using “scabs” and replacement umps. While many sports fans think sports unions have become too powerful, places of refuge for the likes of T.O., Sprewell and Artest, that certainly isn’t true about the minor league umps’ association. It may have been a union certification drive at an umps’ union that first verified the applicability of the NLRA to baseball, but the umps haven’t enjoyed even a small amount of the progress players’ have enjoyed in the collective-bargaining era of professional sports.