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Professional Players Owe Their Fans

The professional sports teams’ unions could help their fans, by advocating on their behalf. It is the fans who pay for their very good wages through their purchasing power. Take baseball, they need fans who make enough money to afford the coast of tickets, parking and hot dogs at the stadiums. The Major League Baseball Professional Association should make sure that players aren’t forced to cross other unions’ picket lines as both the Yankees and Dodgers did last year at Boston hotels where workers were on strike. It would have been a significant gesture for a few Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox players to show up and join the hotel workers’ picket line. One way to avoid putting major league players in this embarrassing situation would be to insert language in their contracts that requires teams to stay in union hotels and prohibits therefrom staying in hotels where the workers are in the midst of labor disputes with management. Maybe if the players were given a little education on the importance of supporting their fans and their working conditions, might make these professional players more empathetic toward their fans and be more inclined to support them in return. It’s a symbiotic relationship, if the fans make decent wages, the players make more money. Only three of the 26 cities with major league teams—Cincinnati, Ohio; Tampa, Florida; and Arlington, Texas, do not have union hotels. Although, the MLBPA did try, but could not stop the New Era Cap Company, which makes the baseball caps for all the major league teams from closing its union factory near Buffalo and move its production to a non-union facility in Florida and overseas. The MLBPA could insist that the teams purchase players uniforms, bats, and other equipment from union companies or at least from companies that pay decent wages, working conditions and benefits. This should go for all professional sports to include football, basketball, hockey and soccer. These highly paid players would be lending a hand to workers who are struggling, which might provide some inspiration to the broader labor movement and the world over. Without their fans buying tickets, hats, T-shirts, food at the stadiums, viewing the games on television, among other things, you wouldn’t be paid the large salaries. The more famous players are paid more, but even the players on the lower ranks earn far more than the average worker. You got yours, now help your fans get theirs by stepping up.
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