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Major League Baseball Essay

Decent Essays

1. Briefly, what are the major developments in the history of the labor-management relationship within Major League Baseball?
According to Lewicki, Barry & Saunders (2010), the major developments of labor-management relationship within Major League Baseball (MLB) started in the late 1960s and were characterized by the ongoing disputes between the owners and the players that resulted in the following hard bargaining agreements, work stoppages and lockouts:
a) 1st and 2nd Basic Agreement – was a contract that 1) significantly increased the minimum salary of all the players and 2) established a protocol that players could follow to air their grievances. The agreements came as a response mechanism that was used by U.S. owners who wanted to …show more content…

However, the clause was challenged in 1976 after two players went to arbitration and won, by a 2 to 1 vote, the right to offer their services to the highest bidder thus killing the reserve clause.
d) 5th Basic Agreement – the MLBPA and the PRC could not agree on how a team that was losing a free agent could be compensated thus making the players to go on strike prior to the start of the 1980 season. This forced both parties to agree on studying the free-agent compensation issue for a year after which they would regroup to revisit the issue. In 1981, the players went on strike again after the two parties failed to agree on the terms of free-agent compensation. This forced the parties to eventually reach an agreement stipulating that the team that had lost a player would in return receive a player from the signing team.
e) 6th Basic Agreement – the MLBPA and the PRC would once again butt heads over pension contribution levels that had been agreed on in the 3rd Basic Agreement and the free-agent compensation that was agreed on in the 5th Basic Agreement. However, the two parties reached an agreement within a day to avoid a strike.
f) 7th Basic Agreement – in 1990, the owners tried to institute another lockout because the lack of a salary cap made it possible for large market teams to attract richer television contracts from local networks and offer players higher salaries. The owners were proposing a revenue sharing program that would mandate the

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