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Major League Baseball isn’t about to give Minor League Baseball players another pay raise anytime soon — even if the one they did promise for 2021 is still lacking — but they have agreed to a welcome change with players’ money all the same. That’s because, according to Baseball America, MLB itself has proposed paying MiLB’s clubhouse attendants and providing (or paying for) meals before games.
Previously, clubhouse attendants were paid in clubhouse dues, which were the responsibility of the players, and a small stipend from the teams. This system was a ridiculous one even in the majors, where the minimum salary for players has been a whole lot better in the 50-plus years since the union negotiated what that figure was, but in the minors, where the vast majority of players are earning poverty-level wages? It was just another form of theft, where MiLB teams and MLB teams got away with not covering one of the essential pieces of the locker room by forcing the players to essentially tip the person doing their laundry so that they had clean clothes and the clubbie could make a living. MLB players, by the way, no longer have to pay clubbies, as of the 2017 collective bargaining agreement. MiLB had not yet escaped this awful setup, but will if this new policy is adopted.
Continue reading “MLB takes small step to improving MiLB pay”