By this time each year, professional baseball fans would already have the start of Spring Training to distract us from the everyday and, as we currently live, extraordinary worries that affect us. However, 2022 is shaping up to be a year in which the Major Leagues, MLB (Major League Baseball), could be affected by a situation of labor unrest, which would affect the entire season.
The MLB is a professional sports league based and established in the United States, which, due to its long history and tradition, enjoys special protection under the rules of law in that country. For example, the league is exempt from competition law (collusion, monopoly, etc.) and has special treatment in labor matters.
The relationship between the players, who are the employees, and the teams, who are the employers, is essentially regulated by a collective agreement called CBA for its acronym in English. The CBA lays down the general rules not only about the employment relationship between players and teams, but also the rules of the sport (for example, whether there will be a designated hitter in both leagues or just the American League) and the structure of the league ( for example, the form and modality of the playoffs).
After the 2021 season ended, the MLB teams and owners decided to pause the entire relationship between the teams and the players, which is called a lockout in English. It is not a strike, since the players are willing to work under the existing CBA, but the owners decided to end the employment relationship until there is agreement on a new CBA.
The effect of this lockout carried out by the owners of MLB is that all activities in the league have been paralyzed and without a final restart date. Therefore, spring training has not started and the start of the regular season, and the number of games, is in jeopardy if a CBA is not achieved or the owners decide to end the lockout.
In this case, the bitterest point of contention is where the “tax” begins on the teams for exceeding a certain number of their players’ payroll, the so-called Competitive Balance Tax (CBT). Unlike other leagues, the MLB does not have a payroll ceiling for its players, but the CBT has been working as a kind of ceiling in practice, and the players understand that it must be increased in the same proportion as income. of MLB teams (substantially faster than the CBT has increased), and likewise, that minimum salaries should be increased.
Although there are also other economic elements that are being discussed between the parties, and some points on which consensus has already been reached (universal designated hitter, 12-team playoffs, among others), this continues to be the critical issue that has made an agreement impossible. .
As fans, the only thing we can ask for is that the parties continue their dialogue in good faith and that reason and economic fairness prevail so that the regular season can start as soon as possible.
