Collective bargaining in Major League Baseball

Collective Bargaining MLB

Collective Bargaining in the MLB

Locate an article describing a collective bargaining situation that has arisen within the past two years. This article should be from a newspaper, an academic journal, or a credible online news source. Use a minimum of two additional references to support your discussion and to respond to the questions in the assignment.

State the nature of the collective bargaining dispute.

The next collective labor agreement in Major League Baseball (MLB) will expire in 2016 and the interested parties are already speculating on the issues that will be the focus on the next round of labor issues (White, 2014). There will be many issues that will need to be addressed in the new agreement.

What are the underlying causes of the dispute?

Many of the rules are to try to create as much of a fair playing field as possible. There are two central factors that drive the modern Major League Baseball phenomena; one is the financial aspects to the game and the other is the love of the sport. Some teams have major advantages due to the fact that they are in major markets and have more revenue at their disposal. For example, the New York Yankees represent highest revenue generating organizations and is valued at two and a half billion dollars (Ozanian, 2014).

If left unregulated, the New York Yankees would have a significant amount of buying power relative to other teams and could attract the top talent available. This would give them an unfair advantage and would reduce other teams' ability to compete. Thus much of the rules and regulations of collective bargaining are designed to maintain a sense of fairness and a level playing field for all the organizations in the league.

What economic or ethical pressures has each side attempted to use to prevail in the dispute?

Sports enthusiast will argue that the game needs to stay as pure as possible to maintain the integrity of the sport. Baseball is an American pastime that has a long and rich heritage that can easily be lost in today's consumerist environment. To some extent those in industry for financial motives also share similar values to a lesser extent. If the game becomes too immersed in financial issues, the game itself could lose favor with the public. Thus there is a mutual position of advantage for individuals who have a wide variety of interests in the sport. The collective bargaining power of the players acts as a force that mitigates some of the competing interests that are inherent in the sport.

If there is any evidence of any illegal or unethical conduct on either side, describe it in detail.

The MLB encompasses high levels of competition from a variety of different groups and individual perspectives. Whenever there are such high levels of competition and the stakes are high, it is not uncommon for individuals and organizations to cross ethical lines to increase their likelihood for success. Some individuals may only bend the rules, while others may be more willing to shatter them completely if it is in their interest.

One example of this type of behavior can be easily illustrated by the players use of illegal substances that can improve their performance. Even in the Olympics in ancient Roman times, Olympians were known to use performance enhancing herbs and mushrooms in order to attempt to improve their performances and make them faster, stronger, or braver and in modern baseball there were a myriad of players who were revealed taking steroids and other performance enhancing substances (Grossman, Kimsey, Moreen, & Owings, 2011). Since steroids were banned in 1991, other substances such as the human growth hormone (hGH) were becoming popular. Players will always actively seek out anything that can potentially give them an advantage; especially when millions of dollars and their entire careers are at stake.

Was the dispute resolved? If so, how?

The use of performance enhancing substances seems to be in a sort of co-evolutionary cycle. After substance become banned and testing is introduced, new forms of substances pop up that are more difficult to test for followed by new testing procedures and followed by new substance -- the cycle continuously repeats. The collective bargaining agreement in MLB and the MLBPA has currently agreed to enhance testing procedures that can detect hGH and other substances. The new testing procedure will include (Calcaterra, 2014):

The number of in-season random urine collections will more than double beginning in the 2014 season, from 1,400 total tests to 3,200;

Blood collections for hGH detection will increase to 400 random collections per year, in addition to the 1,200 mandatory collections conducted during Spring Training;

Carbon Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry tests will be randomly performed on at least one specimen from every player. Basically, this is an enhanced analysis of blood samples which are considered more effective in detecting hGH in blood and are tests endorsed by the World Anti-Doping Agency.