A UNION OF Their Own.

Major League Baseball didn't oppose the unionization effort because, insiders noted, the minor league players had generated so much sympathy from the public and from their major league counterparts. The conditions Lux describes are typical for the over 5,000 minor league ballplayers who, in any given year, are employed by one of the 30 major league teams, which collectively own 120 minor league franchises. "More than a thousand minor leaguers lost their jobs overnight", says Harry Marino, a former minor league pitcher who was an early recruit to the players' crusade. The players' anger was compounded when, in November 2019, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that he was shutting down 42 minor league teams, eliminating one-quarter of all positions for minor league players in one fell swoop. [Extracted from the article]