Ronald Blum
Associated Press
March 23, 2018
Minor league baseball players who make as little as $5,500 a season were stripped of the protection of federal minimum wage laws under a provision in government spending legislation signed Friday. The "Save America's Pastime Act" is included on page 1,967 of the $1.3 trillion spending bill and appears to preempt a lawsuit filed four years ago in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by three players alleging Major League Baseball and its teams violate the Fair Labor Standards Act and state minimum wage and overtime requirements for a work week they estimated at 50-to-60 hours. The provision in the legislation exempts "any employee employed to play baseball who is compensated pursuant to a contract that provides for a weekly salary for services performed during the league's championship season (but not spring training or the offseason) at a rate that is not less than a weekly salary equal to the minimum wage ... for a workweek of 40 hours, irrespective of the number of hours the employee devotes to baseball related activities." The House approved the spending bill Thursday, the Senate followed early Friday and President Donald Trump signed the bill in the afternoon.
"Instead of going through the regular committee process where it has a hearing, all of this was done in secret and a in a very rushed manner," Garrett Broshuis, the lawyer for the players, said Thursday. "It's emblematic of how things are getting done in Washington these days, where the people with a lot of money are able to flex their political muscle and make a lot of contributions and get things done in secret that benefit only them." "We aren't billionaire business owners and billionaire team owners," said Broshius, a minor league pitcher from 2004-09 who later became a lawyer. While early selections in the annual draft of players residing in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, and top amateurs from the rest of the world can command signing bonuses as high as about $8 million under the current rules, monthly minimum salaries for most players on minor league rosters are low: $1,100 at rookie ball and Class A, $1,500 at Double-A and $2,150 at Triple-A. Players also receive a $25 per diem on the road and dinner at the ballpark following games. MLB calculates the average monthly salaries last year at $10,000 in Triple-A, $3,000 in Double-A, $1,600 at upper-level Class A and $1,300 at lower-level A-ball.
