Marvin Miller - Career

Career

Miller, a labor economist, started his work career at the National War Labor Relations Board, and then moved on to the Machinist Union and the United Auto Workers. Finally, he worked his way up the United Steelworkers union to become its leading economist and negotiator. In the spring of 1966, Miller visited Spring Training camps in an effort to get selected as executive director of the MLBPA. He closely followed the joint holdout of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. He was elected head of the MLBPA in 1966.

Miller negotiated MLBPA's first collective bargaining agreement with the team owners in 1968. That agreement increased the minimum salary from $6,000 to $10,000, the first increase in two decades. In 1970, Miller was able to get arbitration included in the collective bargaining agreement. Arbitration meant that disputes would be taken to an independent arbitrator to resolve the dispute. Previously disputes were taken to the Commissioner – hired by the owners – who generally ruled in favor of the owners. Miller considered arbitration the greatest achievement of the early years of the baseball union.

In 1974, Miller used arbitration to resolve a dispute when Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley failed to make an annuity payment as required by Catfish Hunter's contract. The arbitrator ruled that Finley had not met the terms of the contract so Hunter was free to negotiate a new contract with any team – making Hunter a free agent. When Hunter signed a 5-year, $3.5 million contract with the Yankees, the players saw the amount of money that could be made when players were free to negotiate with any team.

Baseball's reserve clause tied players to a team for one year beyond the end of an existing contract, which in practice froze any player's ability to determine his own career. In 1974, Miller encouraged Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally to play out the succeeding year without signing a contract. After the year had elapsed, both players filed a grievance arbitration. The ensuing Seitz decision declared that both players had fulfilled their contractual obligations and had no further legal ties to their ballclubs. This effectively eradicated the reserve clause and ushered in free agency.

As an economist, Miller understood that too many free agents could actually drive down player salaries. Miller agreed to limit free agency to players with more than six years of service, knowing that restricting the supply of labor would drive up salaries as owners bid for an annual, finite pool of free agents.

Miller led the union through three strikes, the first in 1972 which lasted 13 days, in 1980 spring training, and again in 1981 which lasted 50 days, and two lockouts, in 1973 spring training and 1976 spring training. During Miller's era as leader of the Major League Baseball Players' Association (1966–1982), the average players' salary rose from $19,000 to $326,000 a year.