Minor league players have a union, a monumental change for baseball and the culmination of an effort that moved at a blistering pace.

Arbitrator Martin Scheinman on Wednesday verified that the Major League Baseball Players Association had collected enough cards from minor leaguers expressing support for the MLBPA to represent them — a majority of the more than 5,000 players.

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“I applaud this extraordinary group of young players and welcome them to the MLBPA,” MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said in a statement. “This historic achievement required the right group of players at the right moment to succeed. Minor Leaguers have courageously seized that moment, and we look forward to improving their terms and conditions of employment through the process of good faith collective bargaining.”

Momentum to create a union sprinted forward both in the last two and a half weeks and over the last two and a half years. It was no small task, and even just three weeks ago, the effort was still largely out of public view.

“It’s no doubt going to be difficult to start a minor league union,” Garrett Broshuis said in March 2020, on a conference call introducing a new organization, Advocates for Minor Leaguers. “There’s so many guys spread out throughout the country, and they’re chasing the dream of reaching the major leagues. And, you know, there’s quite a bit of pressure too.”

There wasn’t just pressure to play, but pressure for minor leaguers — who so desperately want to reach the majors — to stay quiet. At the time, Baseball America had just reported that a team had issued a gag order to minor leaguers, a maneuver Broshuis said was “just anti-American, and shouldn’t go on in this country.”

A minor leaguer turned lawyer, Broshuis co-founded Advocates to create change for players. Back in 2020, some had already started to speak out about the realities of life in the minors, about the poor pay and the difficult working conditions across the board, from housing to nutrition to travel. For decades prior, the topic had gone largely untouched, sometimes shooed away by antiquated rationalizations.

The formation of Advocates for Minor Leaguers was a notable step. But it was also notable for what the organization was not: a formal labor union that MLB would have to bargain with.

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“Ideally, it would be a union,” Broshuis said on that call in 2020. “And maybe this is the moment that helps galvanize that type of effort.”

It did, and his group made sure of it.

Statement from MLBPA executive director Tony Clark:
"Minor Leaguers have courageously seized that moment, and we look forward to improving their terms and conditions of employment through the process of good faith collective bargaining."

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) September 14, 2022

The commissioner’s office agreed over the weekend that if the card check confirmed the level of support the MLBPA had accrued, then MLB would voluntarily recognize the new union, as opposed to forcing the minor leaguers to go through a formal election process with the National Labor Relations Board.

The parties will now prepare for collective bargaining, which is expected to start in the coming weeks, but not immediately. MLBPA leadership and minor leaguers have to sort through matters like forming a bargaining committee, and setting priorities they’ll seek during the process. Both the players and owners are said to want a deal in place in time for the 2023 season.

“Major League Baseball has a long history of bargaining in good faith with unions, including those representing minor and major league umpires, and major league players,” the league said in a statement. “We respect the right of workers to decide for themselves whether to unionize. Based on the authorization cards gathered, MLB has voluntarily and promptly recognized the MLBPA as the representatives of minor league players. We are hopeful that a timely and fair collective bargaining agreement will be reached that is good for the game, minor league players and our fans.”

At the outset, Broshuis didn’t directly come out and say he was intending for Advocates for Minor Leaguers to lead the organizing effort, although he certainly hinted at it. When Advocates beefed up its staff in 2021 — including with the hire of another ex-player turned lawyer, Harry Marino, as executive director — it became clearer that Advocates was going to do the organizing work itself.

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“For decades, conventional wisdom said it was impossible to unionize the Minor Leagues,” Marino said in a statement Wednesday. “Over the past few years, a group of audacious and committed folks came together to prove that wrong. Each and every person who spent time working on behalf of minor leaguers in recent years shares in today’s victory. Special recognition is owed to the Advocates for Minor Leaguers outreach coordinators and steering committee members whose tireless work in recent months made today a reality. The game of baseball and the lives of thousands will be better because of their efforts.”

Clark pointed to Marino as well, acknowledging his “tireless efforts … and the dedicated group he led at Advocates for Minor Leaguers, without whom this historic organizing campaign would not have been possible.”

What was successfully hidden from the public was the MLBPA’s plan to take over the effort, a plan that is said to have crystallized only in recent weeks.

While top officials at the commissioner’s office knew there was a general unionizing effort underway with Advocates, the commissioner’s office did not have advance awareness of the MLBPA’s involvement, sources said. Many in the industry were in the same boat: most if not all player agents were also caught by surprise when the MLBPA made its intentions known in late August.

Three weeks ago, then, a suggestion that minor leaguers could have a union by mid-September — and a union under the MLBPA, which chose not to go this route for decades — would have seemed preposterous to many. A lot has changed in short order. But the overall unionization effort didn’t come out of nowhere. A bevy of factors came together to make a union viable, including the callous way MLB had long handled minor leaguers, and a revival of support for unions among the general public.

About 5,500 players are said to be in the bargaining unit that MLB and the MLBPA agreed to. Players in complex leagues, including extended spring training, on up through Triple A, are in the union, except for players who are:

• On the voluntarily retired list

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• On the minor league inactive list for more than two years

• In a league outside the U.S. (meaning, players in the Dominican Summer League)

• On a 40-man roster

Whether the CBA ultimately addresses working conditions in the Dominican Summer League in some capacity is to be seen.

The MLBPA did not release the specific tallies from the card count, and the MLBPA is not obligated to. Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, an organization the MLBPA recently joined, called the card check “overwhelmingly victorious” in a statement.

“Today’s overwhelmingly victorious card-check from minor leaguers to be represented by the Major League Baseball Players Association is a historic win that will benefit the players both on and off the field for generations to come,” Shuler said. “Minor leaguers have gone more than a century without union representation. In a multibillion-dollar industry, there is no excuse to pay these players below the poverty line. Now, by joining together to use their collective voice at the bargaining table, the minor leaguers will be able to advocate for a union contract that will ensure a future with the good pay and benefits they deserve.”

Not everything will necessarily be easy from here for the new group. Some player agents have suggested the MLBPA cannot fairly serve both the interests of minor leaguers and major leaguers at the same time, although MLBPA executive director Tony Clark — who felt strongly that minor leaguers should be led by the MLBPA — disagrees. Even if false, it’s a perception the MLBPA likely will have to work to dissuade.

Minor leaguers do not have the same leverage or demands as major leaguers, meaning that this is ultimately a different type of CBA negotiation than the parties typically engage in. Bruce Meyer of the MLBPA and Dan Halem of MLB, the lead negotiators of the major league deal, are to reprise those roles for these talks. Whether the different nature of the minors means the negotiation could move with greater speed, or less public acrimony, than the 2021-22 major league talks is to be seen. But it’s likely, on the assumption there will not be a lockout or strike any time soon.

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Ultimately, it’s remarkable that thousands of minor leaguers were ready to take this step. Wednesday is a landmark day for baseball players and for those who support budding unionization efforts across the country.

The staffers at Advocates for Minor Leaguers who led the organizing process are now working for the MLBPA in different capacities. The co-founder Broshuis, however, has not migrated. He remains busy with a different effort: the $185 million settlement to a lawsuit over minor leaguers’ wages. His firm, Korein Tillery, represents the plaintiffs.

Back in March 2020, Broshuis was asked if Advocates was having conversations with MLB about minor leaguers’ concerns.

“Not yet, no,” he said. “That would be something we would love to do at some point. But no, not yet.”

Minor leaguers and the commissioner’s office will be talking a lot more now. With a union involved, the conversations will be different than ever before.

(Photo: Associated Press / Charlie Riedel)