preview

Essay about The 1994 Baseball Strike

Good Essays

The 1994 Baseball Strike On August 12, 1994 professional baseball players went on strike for the eighth time in the sports’ history. Since 1972, negotiations between the union and owners over contract terms has led to major economic problems and the absence of a World Series in 1994. All issues were open for debate due to the expiration of the last contract. Until 1968, no collective bargaining agreement had ever been reached between the owners and the players (Dolan 11). Collective bargaining is the process by which union representatives for employees in a bargaining unit negotiate employment conditions for the entire bargaining unit (Atlantic Unbound). Instead, the players were at the mercy of each owner who possessed the …show more content…

Two major issues led directly to the interruption and eventually the cancellation of the entire season. After a 28-0 vote among the owners, they agreed to share revenue on the condition they could get the players to accept a salary cap. The issue of revenue sharing was directly linked to the salary cap. By taking this action, the owners signaled they had come to realize the problem of disparity between big market teams (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago) and small market teams (Seattle, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee). The problem, however, was that because the owners linked their revenue sharing with a salary cap, the players felt they were being asked to solve the owners’ financial disparity problem. There is a noticeable difference in team payrolls, as displayed in 1993, when the the payroll of the Toronto Blue Jays was $48.4 million, compared with San Diego Padres’ payroll of only $10.6 million (Layden 17). Therefore, the idea of revenue sharing, wherein big market teams would transfer monies to the small market teams, was a good one, but it caused disputes among the owners as to how the formula would be worked out. Not all of the small market teams were in bad shape financially. In fact, some that had built or were building new stadiums such as Baltimore, Cleveland, and Texas were doing quite well. It was not until June 14, 1994, that the owners finally presented their collective bargaining proposal, 18

Get Access