Giveback demands in MLB bargaining lead to work stoppages

NEW YORK (AP) — When baseball players agreed a decade ago to restraints on signing bonuses for draft picks, then-union head Michael Weiner said: “If it doesn’t work, we can always try something else.”

Getting a side to give back something it gained previously in collective bargaining can lead to difficult negotiations, which is why Major League Baseball has its first work stoppage in 26 years.

Free agency has been the central issue in baseball collective bargaining for a half-century, joined by the luxury taxes, salary arbitration and cost controls on amateur spending.

Following a rare decline in the average salary, these are some of the areas in which the Major League Baseball Players Association demands change. Major League Baseball has told the union there is no support among the owners for the union’s proposals on free agent and arbitration eligibility.

FREE AGENCY

Agreed to in collective bargaining in 1976 following the decision by arbitrator Peter Seitz, who ruled in the Andy Messersmith/Dave McNally grievance that the reserve clause in the Uniform Player Contract meant a club could renew a player for just one season, not in perpetuity as management had long claimed.

Since the 1976 agreement, free-agent eligibility has been set at six seasons of major league service.

The players’ association, claiming teams deliberately have held back prospects to delay their eventual eligibility by a year (one season of service is 172 days, meaning an extra 15 days in the minors can keep a player under team control for an extra year), proposed that for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 offseasons it become six years of service or five years of service and age 30.5, whichever comes earlier. For the 2025-26 offseason and later, eligibility would become six years of service or five years...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Giveback-demands-in-MLB-bargaining-lead-to-work-16673281.php