Unlike many other pensions facing challenges, this one is easy to fix. The Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) just needs to do the right thing.
For the past decade, I have attempted to do right by a group of retirees who are not receiving Major League Baseball (MLB) pensions.
In April 2011, MLB and the union representing current ballplayers–the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA)–partially remedied the situation by giving all non-vested men an annual stipend of $625 for every 43 game days of service that they were on an active MLB roster, up to $10,000. And that’s before taxes are taken out.
As a lifelong baseball fan, I find this to be an injustice.
Courtesy: Sports Business Journal (April 2017)
The brunt of the blame falls squarely on the MLBPA–an organization that paid its 72-member staff $16 million in 2015 (source: IRS filing). Tony Clark, the MLBPA’s executive director (and the first former player to serve in that role) not only receives his MLB pension but a salary, including benefits, of over $2 million.
Meanwhile, in 2010, the MLBPA got United States Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) to sponsor what was tantamount to a taxpayer-subsidized $165 billion bailout of organized labor, including the MLBPA and the Teamsters. The Senator’s bill would have shifted the liabilities of the players’ union pension fund to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
The union dared to expect American taxpayers to support its bailout!
So why won’t the union help these retirees? Daniel R. Marburger, associate professor of economics at Arkansas State University, put it this way: “The rank and file in labor unions want to make as much money for themselves as possible,” he told me when I interviewed him for my book, “even if it’s at the expense of the exploited.”
“Some,” Marburger continued, “subscribe to what I call ‘The Three Musketeers philosophy,’ namely, all-for-one and one-for-all.”
Marc Eisenberg, the author of Money Players Blog, concurs. “Current players should continue to fight for greater retirement and health benefits for former athletes–not just for recent retirees.”
“All pro athletes should keep in mind,” Eisenberg declared, “that they will be active, voting members of the Players Association for just a few years. They will be retired players for decades.”
Today’s players need to remember that.
_______
Douglas J. Gladstone is a freelance magazine writer and author of two books, including “A Bitter Cup of Coffee; How MLB & The Players Association Threw 874 Retirees a Curve.”
