A major league baseball attorney said Friday in federal court that class action lawsuit in Puerto Rico for labor exploitation of minor league players”>minor league players should not be paid during spring training, according to a report by Evan Drellich the athlete.
The attorney said minor leagues should not be paid because they should be considered trainees.
The topic of conversation was part of a larger row for MLB as the league sought to dismiss an eight-year-old lawsuit for minor league compensation. MLB is a defendant in a class action lawsuit scheduled to begin June 1.
“It’s the players who get the most benefit from the training opportunities that are offered to them than the clubs, which actually only bear the costs of that training,” argued Major League Baseball’s legal counsel Elise Bloom.
“During the training season, players are not employees and would not be subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act or any state minimum wage law.”
Garrett Broshuis, an attorney for Korein Tillery, is a former minor league player who is the players’ legal representative. Broshuis dismissed Bloom’s claim.
“Suddenly, during the periods when we call it ‘training’, they are no longer employees, even though they work under the same employment contract that obliges them to provide services, e.g. B. ‘Throughout the calendar year’.” Broshuis said.
The arguments made in court Friday against minor league pay are an extension of testimonies by MLB officials in court last year.
A year ago, Denise Martin, senior vice president at NERA Economic Consulting, wrote to the court on behalf of MLB. Martin explained that players who attend spring training receive a weekly value of $2,200 from their teams.
“This number is an estimate of the cost that plaintiffs would incur if they had attended baseball prospecting camp instead of attending the minor leagues,” Martin said at the time.
Bloom, who represented MLB in court Friday, said in an argument last year against player pay that players “gained generally useful life skills from their time in the minor leagues.”
It is important to note that while the owners and the MLB Players Association are continuing to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement that will inevitably impact player salaries, the agreement will have no direct impact on minor league players as the minor leagues are not part of the MLB Players Association.
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