The topic of professional baseball salaries came up in discussion in a bar one sunny afternoon in 1980. One person at the table was rigid in his opinion that no professional athlete is worth a million dollars. In November of 1979, Nolan Ryan (no relation to the author) signed a four-year contract with the Houston Astros for $4.5 million dollars. Ryan became the first Major League Baseball player to achieve a salary of one-million-dollars or more per year. “$4,000,000 in 1979 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $16,958,071.63 today.” And yet, today’s free agents in the baseball market are turning down qualifying offers of $20.325 million. Many of them could sign lucrative contracts with a few million more. And none of them can hold a candle to Nolan Ryan, who threw seven no-hitters, three more than any other individual pitcher in baseball history.
My argument then is the same one I use today. If someone can get paid a million-dollars, they are worth it. That afternoon at the bar I was sitting with three people. The person I was debating owned a business. I was a working stiff in a packing plant. Naturally, as a business owner, he would be outraged that an employee would suggest they were not being paid what they were worth. As a union member, I was content with what I was being paid. The union wages were negotiated in good faith between management and Labor representatives to assure that each and every employee was worth a particular amount within a range. Fair is fair.
I understood the business owner’s position, but I disagreed. In many businesses where management consists of the boss and several employees, it is not unusual for the boss to make the most money. That concept applies to professional sports, as well. Baseball team owners seldom cry poverty. Oh, wait, unless they want a new stadium. But the economic model of supply and demand is just as evident in baseball, football, basketball, and a few other professional sports teams as it is in any American business. Women’s sports is finally catching up, but women’s sports in general lag far behind. Are the women athletes worth more? My opinion would be that they are; if the team ownership has the excessive profit margin prevalent in men’s sports
More than once I have heard a non-union member say that they were worth more than a coworker, and that was their reasoning behind not joining a union. However, the belief behind that unsettling statement is that if the employer desires to pay people what they think they are worth, without a union contract, that person claiming they are worth so much more is going to find out that they are worth less than their ego imagines. In that scenario, every employee’s wage will decrease, including the person who believes they are worth more than any co-employee.
When I was discharged from the Army, I collected unemployment for a while until I decided to go back to the job I had worked when I was drafted, working at Marvin’s Provisions. There were a few people there who weren’t working there when I left. Terry L. was one of those employees. It wasn’t long after I restarted my job at Marvin’s when Terry asked me how much I was making. I learned a long time ago that it’s not a good idea to ask that question when there is no formal policy or contract in place. But I answered his question with a question. “How much are you making?” We exchanged information on our hourly wages, and I found out he was making several dimes an hour more than me. Although I had a few years of experience, and that experience was with Marvin’s, he had been hired not more than a few months before I was rehired and had no experience whatsoever.
One day, we gathered to unload the beef truck. As usual, it had front quarters and hind quarters weighing between 120 pounds to 180 pounds each. Occasionally, there might be a bull carcass on the back end of the truck. As you can imagine, a bull carcass weighs considerably more than a heifer or steer. Sometimes two men would unload it together. I thought the practice was clumsy and dangerous. There was a bull carcass on this particular day, and I told everyone to stand aside as I moved in on the front quarter and lifted it myself. I moved it from the back of the truck to the waiting meat hook roller that Floyd was holding. It required lifting, turning, and walked two to three steps. I laid the quarter on the roller and Floyd rolled it down to the scale. “326 pounds!” Marvin yelled back. “A new record for one person.”
“Roll it back here!” I requested. I didn’t think they would, but the huge front quarter was rolled back to the rear of the truck, and I asked Floyd to hold the hook. He smiled. He knew what I was doing. I picked the quarter up, turned around and dropped it back onto the meat hook in the truck.
“There!” I said loudly so that everyone in the place could hear me. “Let Terry take it off the truck. I quit!”
I took off my apron, white coat, silly hat and punched out.
I was walking home when a car pulled up next to me. It was Marvin. He was trying to convince me to come back to work.
“Can I make more than Terry?”
“No.”
“Just as much as Terry?”
“No, Terry needs the money more because he’s married.”
Marvin received my favorite answer to stupid statements: “Go fuck yourself!” I went home to lunch.
I thought I had proved that I was worth more than Terry. Probably not. He kept his job.
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