The MLBPA’s Efforts to Unionize the Minors Didn’t Happen Overnight

In an interview, Tony Clark discussed the players association’s monumental step to represent minor league players and what it could mean for baseball.

AP Photo/Richard Drew

On Sunday, the MLBPA sent union authorization cards to minor league baseball players—a first step toward organizing the minors, which could introduce thousands of new members to the union and would have tremendous, widespread ramifications for organized labor in baseball. As part of the process, the MLBPA announced it had absorbed the staff of the nonprofit Advocates for Minor Leagues, a group that had previously been rallying to improve minor league working conditions and pay.

Sports Illustrated spoke with MLBPA executive director Tony Clark on Tuesday about the effort.

This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Sports Illustrated: Why did you feel now was the time to look at organizing the minors?

Tony Clark: Well, I think it’s a combination of a number of things. Most importantly, the players themselves were interested in this discussion at this time. But it’s been an ongoing discussion for years, so it’s not something that just happened overnight. The players themselves are the ones that drive the proverbial bus, particularly when it comes to this type of decision. As important as it is, as complex as it is, they were the ones that were interested in making this decision at this time.

SI: The last few years have brought a lot of change here, with teams being cut from the minors, those affiliated roster spots going away and players just being generally a lot more vocal about pay and working conditions. Were there any particular indications you had that interest here was real and viable, and it made sense to move now?

TC: Again, I think the experiences from the last couple of years obviously had guys asking questions and offering commentary. Advocates for Minor Leaguers did an outstanding job in helping guys aggregate and offer a collective voice based on the experiences that they were having. And so yes, there’s no doubt that when I reference an ongoing dialogue, that over the course of the last couple of years, there’s been a steady drumbeat of players wanting to have a more formal seat at the proverbial table, if you will.

SI: In other sports with minor league unions, there may be a working relationship with the major league union, but they’re not represented by the major league union. What was the thinking behind the MLBPA wanting to take this on—not just to assist in organizing the minors but to actually be the representative body?

TC: With our fraternity, the structure that we’re talking about is the one that we thought made the most sense, and the players believed made the most sense, both now and moving forward. So what I often share with folks is that you can view this as one tent, if you will, but two separate tables. And those separate tables are in reference to two separate CBAs, separate governance, while all being under one big tent. So with that structure—and in communicating that to players, both on the major league side and on the minor league side—we believed that was the best way to move forward.

SI: Going off that, obviously those different tables under that one tent would face some very different challenges—very different pay, different career expectations. How would you manage that broad variety of interests you’d now be trying to represent?

TC: As with on the major league side, the players are the ones who will determine what is a priority versus what isn’t. We make recommendations—that’s what we do, based on our experience and expertise, and then we present those things to the players. And the players will make a determination as to how best to prioritize all of the moving pieces. Then we go from there. So it’ll fundamentally be no different. But you’re 100% correct that in some ways, the challenges—or the experiences, and therefore the issues—may manifest themselves in different ways.

SI: What do you anticipate will be some of the biggest challenges?

TC: Well, I think with any organizing campaign, there are challenges—I think with any negotiation there are challenges. I think with the application of the rights that otherwise are negotiated over, there are challenges. And as we’ve seen on the major league side, stemming from the decision that the players made with Marvin Miller in 1966, you navigate those challenges with strong leadership, strong input, education and engagement. And when you do so, it’s not just to the betterment of the individual players or the collective players, it’s also a benefit to the game. So we’ll navigate them. There are going to be unforeseen challenges. We recognize that there are always speed bumps on the way to progress. This is going to be no different.

SI: You mentioned education there. I know you had Zooms with minor leaguers yesterday. What were those conversations like, and what sort of questions were you answering?

TC: It’s interesting. There’s this belief that it happened overnight. There's been ongoing communication and dialogue and education, and I highlighted Advocates earlier—they have done a tremendous job in doing all of that. The communications that we've had—over a longer period than perhaps most are aware—have ranged. There's always questions in regard to the unknown that cover the entirety of the landscape. But at this time, there are fewer questions, if for no other reason than a lot of them have been answered. There will be more, undoubtedly. But on the calls that we have and that we had yesterday—outside of some of the rhetoric that’s out there that may be partially true, but not entirely—the focus has less to do on a lot of the questions and more to do on process and what’s necessary in this time to move the campaign forward. That seems to be more of the focus than anything else.

SI: Can you give a sense of just how long those conversations have been going on?

TC: Years.

SI: Can you say how many?

TC: How many years? Well, when Garrett Broshuis established Advocates for Minor Leaguers [in 2019], there was informal dialogue that started then. So when I say years, I literally mean years. This hasn't been, “Wake up on a Monday morning and by Tuesday, all the pieces are aligned.” This has been steady engagement and consideration that has happened over multiple years.

SI: You mentioned Marvin Miller earlier. The union has been a presence for a long time, but it’s been decades since you’ve had to do an organizing campaign. What did it mean to build up the resources to take on a new fight that this union hasn’t really had to contemplate for quite a while?

TC: We’ve done a number of things over the last few years, independent of an organizing campaign, to position ourselves going into and coming out of collective bargaining. The main thing has remained the main thing. And that’s why when I highlight two separate CBAs, our responsibilities and commitment to the major league players isn’t going to change. But we’ve positioned ourselves to provide the support. This is what players agreed to when we had our player leadership call last week—provide the support, that financial support, that we know the minor leaguers don’t have. And we have that wherewithal now because of the things that we’ve done over the last few years, and that will continue. So it wasn’t about the minor league organization that had us make the decisions that were made over the last few years to build up resources and find other avenues of value for players. It was against the backdrop of collective bargaining, and the decisions that we’ve made positioned us accordingly then and will continue to be an area of resource now moving forward, for both the major league guys and in the near term, the minor league guys as well.

SI: And what has the reaction been from major league players? You brought up the player committee right there—what have you gotten from them on what it means to try to welcome minor leaguers into the fold?

TC: The major league players—the vast majority of them haven't forgotten what it was like coming through the minor leagues. The major league players view all professional players as a part of a baseball fraternity. And so this is personal to them, too. That’s why it’s fairly easy to have the conversation with the guys about how best to support the minor leaguers. And to be honest, going back again a few years, the major league guys were asking us about said support. So it's not a tough stretch when you engage major league players and ask them about providing support to the minor league guys, for them to jump on board.

SI: The cards have been sent out. What do you see coming next?

TC: Twenty four hours in, we’re very encouraged by the response. We expect that to continue in the foreseeable future, and then beyond that is when you look toward recognition and potentially an election. Then from there, you look at an opportunity to sit down and negotiate a first CBA.

SI: There are a lot of moving pieces here, but are you planning for an election, or do you have any hope that voluntary recognition may be possible? What do you see there right now?

TC: We’re ready for all of the above. And we’ll have to see how things manifest themselves here in the coming days and weeks on that front. We’ll see.

SI: Finally, big picture, what most excites you about the potential here to have all professional baseball players unionized in this one fraternity, as you called it?

TC: I think that’s just it—our fraternity. There’s nothing that means more to me than our fraternity. We have challenges. We’ll continue to have challenges. But as a former player who hasn’t forgotten what it was like to be in the minor leagues—but having been fortunate enough to play a number of years on the major league side—I recognize that having a high level of continuity and engagement among the professional player fraternity has valuables in the near term and in the long term. And that’s what I’m most excited about—just having a formal line of connectivity from top to bottom. Much like the reason that I got involved as an active player, it’s having an opportunity to have a formal voice about the wellbeing of our game and about the rules that govern our careers, as short as they are, even if they’re long.

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