Teams must comply with wage and hour laws - some of which, absent a collective-bargaining agreement with a minor league union, could have potentially led to Class A players in states such as California being paid more than Triple-A players in other states. Minor leaguers, as part of the settlement, will now be paid in spring training. Union or no union, significant changes to the minor leagues were coming after the league's $185 million payment to settle the class-action Senne v. It came with input and approval from the owners, who also understood the circumstances. He recognized the stakes, consulted with owners and made a decision. He understands the mechanics of baseball labor negotiations as well as anyone, having bargained not only with the MLBPA but the major league and minor league umpires' unions. How did commissioner Rob Manfred make this decision? How involved were the MLB owners? Over half of minor leaguers support unionization.The issues about which the committee showed interest should be addressed in the bargaining process, nullifying the headache of outside intervention. The specter of congressional involvement - and the potential for grandstanding that Capitol Hill brings - created a great unknown for the league. Whether the exemption, or pieces of it, ever were actually in jeopardy is unclear. The immediate recognition of the union also solved a lingering issue for MLB: intervention from the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the league's antitrust exemption. Both outcomes were going to end up in the same place: with the MLBPA representing a unit of minor league players. At that point, MLB understood it had two choices: voluntarily recognize or force the players to go through a vote via the National Labor Relations Board. Within a week of the MLBPA sending out union-authorization cards, a majority of the 5,500 active minor league players returned them saying they wanted to designate the MLBPA as their bargaining representative. Last weekend, Major League Baseball decided to voluntarily recognize the minor leaguers' unionization. Here, Alden Gonzalez, Jeff Passan and Jesse Rogers break down how we got here and what it all means. Late Wednesday afternoon, thousands of minor league players became members of the Major League Baseball Players Association after an arbitrator officially validated their union-authorization cards and the league voluntarily recognized the union as players' bargaining representative - the last step in the surprisingly quick unionization of Minor League Baseball.
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