MiLB, Umpires Reach Five-Year Contract

The Association of Minor League Umpires and Minor League Baseball reached an agreement on a five-year agreement that will keep labor peace for the next five seasons. The deal runs through the 2021 season.

Among the concessions won by the AMLU were increases in pay and per diem, upgrades in hotels, a tweak to the way umpire uniforms are purchased and improved procedures for concussion protocols.

“I think it went well for everybody,” AMLU executive director Shaun Francis said. “I think this is the type of deal where both sides have something to look at and say it was a good deal for them and both sides say I wish we could have done more or given less, whatever the case may be, but at the end of the day it’s a good contract for both sides for management and for labor.”

The deal comes a little more than 10 years after a labor impasse between the two sides resulted in an umpires strike during the 2006 season.

“We are glad that the two sides were able to work together on an agreement that will ensure labor peace through the 2021 season,” MiLB’s vice president of baseball and business operations Tim Brunswick said. “This agreement allows us to continue to manage the costs involved with hiring, training, developing and evaluating the professional umpires that preside over games played between our 160 teams in the United States and Canada.”

The deal was negotiated by Brunswick, International League president Randy Mobley, MiLB’s umpire development director Dusty Dellinger and Mekesha Montgomery of the law firm Frost Brown Todd.

Under the previous agreement, Minor League Baseball paid for the umpires’ uniforms—pants and shirts, primarily—but the umps were left to pay for all of the other necessities. That meant that chest protectors, shin guards, masks, shoes for working both the bases and home plate, ball bags, plate brushes and indicators all came out of the umpire’s pocket. Under the new deal, umpires will still be expected to maintain their uniforms and keep them up to snuff, but will be given a cash credit to a local sporting goods store to purchase whatever equipment they deem necessary.

The umpires also receive an upgrade in the quality of hotels they stay in while on the road. The new agreement guarantees umps will stay only in hotels that have indoor entrances, which was a negotiating point because of a safety. Break-ins aren’t common, but this upgrade further decreases their chances.

“It wasn’t a major change, because virtually all the hotels we were staying in were indoor-style hotels, but (the agreement) sort of locks that down,” Francis said.

There were also changes to the protocols in place to deal with potential concussions sustaind while working the plate. Currently, each crew is provided with cold pack designed to fit around a person’s head in case a concussion is suspected. Problem was, some stadiums in the lower levels of the minor leagues weren’t equipped with refrigerators or freezers to keep the ice pack cool during the game. Under the new agreement each team will be required to have a minifridge in their umpire locker room to store the concussion pack.

Additionally, any new technology that MiLB would like to implement—such as pitch-tracking systems—will have to be brought before the umpires’ union for discussion.

It has been 10 years since the umpires strike, and Francis believes a lot of progress has been made since then—and since the AMLU’s formation in 1999—toward improving the quality of life for umpires in the minor leagues.

“Overall, I think, the quality-of-life issues for minor league umpires,” he said, “are 180 degrees better from 1999 until today.”