ANDMajor League Baseball plunged into its first work stoppage in a quarter of a century after their collective agreement expired Wednesday night without agreeing to a new agreement, and the owners immediately ordered a closure of activities.
The strategy, equivalent to a strike by the owners according to federal labor lawHe ended with the labor peace that prevailed in the sport after 9,740 days in 26 and a half years.
The stoppage begins 30 days after the Atlanta Braves’ victory in the World Series It crowned a full season after 2020, shortened by the coronavirus pandemic and played in empty stadiums.
The teams decided to force the long-awaited confrontation during the winter break rather than risk the players standing up in the summer, as happened in 1994. The two parties had closed four consecutive agreements without the need for strikesBut they had been heading for this confrontation for more than two years.
The talks that began last spring ended on Wednesday after a meeting of just minutes and with the parties far apart on dozens of key economic issues. The club negotiators left the union’s hotel about nine hours before the agreement expired at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, and lPlayers said MLB didn’t come up with any major new financial proposals this week.
The 30 team owners held a short virtual meeting to reaffirm their decision, and the league announced its fourth ever lockout – plus five other strikes – in an emailed letter to the Major League Baseball Players Association.
The union has demanded changes after the malaise caused by the decline in average wages, a middle class affected because teams concentrate the cost on more onerous contracts and the replacing veteran players with younger and lower paid players, especially in clubs that dismantle their squads to rebuild themselves.
Managers, determined to protect the wage restrictions achieved in recent decades, they rejected the union’s requests that the teams described as significant alterations in the economic structure of sport, iincluding reducing the length of service required to become a free agent or for salary arbitration.