Amid changes, Chiefs players to get pay hike, housing

The absence or presence of justice can be found almost everywhere, from homeless shelters to legislatures to baseball diamonds.

Baseball is probably far from your mind unless you’re a fan of Atlanta (whose World Series star was ex-Peoria Chiefs outfielder Jorge Soler) or you dread a likely Major League Baseball work stoppage. Chiefs players are gone but General Manager Jason Mott is mindful of MLB’s labor talks, plus changes in wages and working conditions in the Minor Leagues, as he prepares for 2022 and another step back from the pandemic.

“This will be the second year we try to get bask to ‘normal’,” he says. “Like everywhere else, it hasn’t been easy.”

Besides COVID, which cancelled the minors’ 2020 season and hurt 2021, Minor League baseball is facing reforms players and their advocates see as overdue, and other changes that could make Designated Hitters and artificial turf seem quaint.

On the plus side, MLB in February announced it’s requiring in-season housing to be provided for minor leaguers starting this year, and increased wages. A more neutral alteration was improving facilities and realigning the minors through a Professional Development League plan that eliminated franchises including Iowa’s Burlington Bees and Clinton Lumberkings. On the downside (for traditionalists anyway) is baseball trying an Automated Balls & Strikes system (“robot umpires”) to be used experimentally in the Atlantic League.

“The players certainly deserve a raise and housing – whatever help they can get,” says Mike Olson, a longtime Peoria coach and former associate scout for the Mariners active with the storied Central Illinois Collegiate League for years.

“Back in the CICL, for amateurs, they paid their own expenses,” he continues. “Sometimes guys would live in rooms on Bradley’s campus. When future Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt played here in 1969, he stayed at the Holiday Inn in East Peoria.

“As for teams’ facilities, I don’t see how the minors can make it,” he adds. “Some teams may need to invest millions to make those improvements in Major-League-style clubhouses, batting cages and so on.”

Mott says MLB will underwrite the housing, whether through arranged lodging or player stipends.

“What we’ll lose is our host families,” he says. “They’re local homes that offer spare bedrooms so players can save on rent, and the players are mostly gone, but they like having that connection, and the families do, too.”

In the 1950s, about 10,000 ballplayers were in hundreds of teams in dozens of states. Now, some 4,000 ballplayers play on 120 clubs in 11 MLB-affiliated leagues under the 10-year agreement with MLB announced in February. The Chiefs – a Limited Liability Corporation with 48 shareholders, including well-known locals such as David Bielfeldt, Michael Cullinan and Don Fites – are in Class High-A’s Central League, with 12 teams in two divisions. Peoria’s in the West Division, with teams from Appleton and Beloit, Wis., Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa, and South Bend. Ind.

The reforms probably stem from criticism from players and supporters about the wages, hours and working conditions young athletes in the minors endured.

Former minor-leaguer Harry Marino, director of Advocates of Minor Leaguers, told ESPN. “This is a historic victory for minor-league baseball players. When we started talking to players this season about the difficulties they face, finding and paying for in-season housing was at the top.”

MLB sets minor-league pay, which has been between $12,000 and $16,800 a season (for perspective, the federal poverty level for an individual is $12,880. Outrage resulted in 2018, when in a 2,232-page $1.3 trillion spending bill, minor-league players were excluded from the minimum wage, overtime and other protections in the Fair Labor Standards Act. Inserted on page 1,967 from an original bill titled “Save America’s Pastime Act” (critics said the title was “flagrantly inappropriate” and asked if the pastime was “screwing workers”).

That clarified/legalized past practice (and killed pending lawsuits), but MLB heard the complaints and raised wages 38% to 72%. Rookies will go from $290 to $400/week; A-ball from $290 to $500; AA from $350 to $600; and AAA from $502 to $700.

Working conditions aren’t as simple as playing games. Minor leaguers have bills; some have families; and duties before and after games, plus ongoing conditioning and travel time, totaling far more than 40-hour work weeks.

“Players are faster, stronger and bigger,” Mott says. “They eat better, work out more, and know analytics, unlike just a few years ago.

“The Professional Development League structure helps ensure quality,” he continues, “making sure the facilities are high-caliber and the [geographic] alignment makes sense. We’re set to stay where we’re going to be. The Cardinals’ clubs are located well, with [Triple-A] Memphis, [Double-A] Springfield, Mo., and us all pretty close.”

Finalizing his staff, Mott – a 43-year-old Missouri native who’s been in baseball for 12 years and is entering his eighth season with the Chiefs – also is planning for promotions and marketing.

“People’s time is valuable, so we want to give them reasons to come, from fireworks to giveaways,” he says.

Professional baseball is entertainment, part of what makes towns “liveable,” along with theaters, museums, and other attractions. Also, unlike some workers, minor leaguers have chances to interact with the public.

“Guys buy into that,” Mott says. “We had a back-up player who was having a hard time talking with a fan before a game, not knowing their child was hearing-impaired. When he realized it, he made the effort and really made a connection. The family came back a lot, and their kid threw out the first pitch once, and because of the deafness couldn’t hear cheers, so we had the crowd raise and wave their arms. That was really heartwarming.”

A family of four on average pays $253 to attend a Major League game (counting parking, concessions and two ballcaps), according to the 2021 Team Marketing Report produced by Fan Cost Index. But at Dozer Park, where capacity is about 7,000, tickets cost $10-$16. Attendance over the 58 home games in last year’s five-month schedule “hadn’t quite recovered from the pandemic,” Mott says, adding that the team still drew more than 70,000.

An owners lockout or players strike seems imminent since the previous Collective Bargaining Agreement was scheduled to expire Dec. 1 with unsettled issues (bringing to mind a comment MLB Players Association director Marvin Miller said: “Money is not the issue. The real issue is the owners’ attempt to punish the players for having the audacity not to settle and for having the audacity not to crawl”).

But the Minors will play if MLB and players don’t.

Minor leaguers aren’t unionized, but work at moving up. Some have.

Just as the CICL had Schmidt, plus future big leaguers ranging from Peoria’s Joe Girardi to Kirby Puckett and Joe Niekro, a list of ex-Chiefs is impressive: Jack Flaherty, Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols; Javier Baez, Mark Grace and Greg Maddux,

Mott says he can feel like a parent or teacher seeing players succeed.

“It’s pretty cool,” he says. “On the business side, we want them to make it; it’s great to have that to tout. But it’s always awesome. And sometime surprising. [Outfielder] Lars Nootbaer struggled here [in 2019], but he improved and made his St. Louis debut this season.”

Next season’s home opener is Tuesday, April 12 against the Dodgers-affiliated Great Lakes Loons, hopefully with happier prospects.

And no robots umpiring.

Remembering 'An Uncommon Love' in an uncommon country

 

Around the holiday season of hope, the touring show “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” sparked warm thoughts of the award-winning singer/songwriter’s singular knack for finding hope amid loss, faith in the face of despair, and fine music and lyrics – whether created from inspiration or commercial need

Last month, the Tony and Grammy Award-winning production was in Chicago and Peoria, and this month stops in Mason City and Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Bloomington, Ind. (returning to the Midwest for March performances in Davenport before winding down in June).

 Carole King, one of her tunes, and an anthology featuring her were recommended to me by a reader not long ago. He wrote to praise a relatively obscure record from decades ago, “Largo,” for the Americana music gem’s overlooked wonder, and also its renewed relevance at a time of division and discord – relevance furnished by a particular track by Carole King.

Loosely inspired by Antonín Dvořák's “New World Symphony,” the “Largo” project brought together an enormously talented group of musicians for the 1998 album, released by Polygram. Its blend of work songs, Appalachian reels and ballads that somehow echo the wild frontier and also contemporary society, ‘Largo” conjures work by The Band’s first few records, and the timeless, imaginative magic of music and U.S. history’s fine or cruel moments.

Its musicians include The Chieftains, Cyndi Lauper and Taj Mahal, members of the rock groups The Band (Levon Helm and Garth Hudson) and The Hooters (Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman), and King, who duets with Joan Osbourne on “An Uncommon Love,” which King co-authored with k.d. lang.

Like “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” a stage version of “Largo” was once discussed. Elsewhere, Little Feat, with Bela Fleck on an album in 2000, covered “Largo’s” “Gimme A Stone,” by Levon Helm and David Forman, and Roger Daltrey of The Who not only performed live versions of “Gimme A Stone” and Taj Mahal’s “Freedom Ride,” but publicly praised “Largo” and urged people to listen to it.

Apart from its enjoyable importance, its inclusion of King’s “An Uncommon Love” (which later appeared on her 2001 album “Love Makes the World”) resonates today, whether received as a nod to romance between individuals or reconciliation within our nation.

The reader and fan of that tune laments, “The United States of America is an uncommon country, having been founded upon the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. According to the Declaration of Independence, a government was to be established that would make ‘its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to … seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.’ The signers of the Declaration agreed that, ‘We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor’.”

Indeed, when too much of the country can’t agree on election outcomes, public-health procedures, or basic facts, it’s reassuring to remember that the nation was once better, and it could be again. 

 

Carole King’s “Uncommon Love” –

Why do we isolate each other?

All the walls we build between us

Make it so hard to be together.

 

How can we tear at one another

When the thing we have in common

Is an uncommon love?

 

Walls can fall, tears can mend,

So why can't we reach across the line

And touch each other?

 

Here on two sides of the truth

We've a middle ground in common.

We have an uncommon love.

 

Time can heal, hearts can mend,

So why can't we reach across the line

And touch each other?

 

When will we ever learn

That the thing we have in common

Is an uncommon love?

We have an uncommon love:

An uncommon love.

Supply chain-chain-chain… chain of fools

The supply-chain mess didn’t really hit me when a businessman friend mentioned he couldn’t get white cardboard boxes, or even when the bicycle I ordered was delayed for months. Then, standing in line at a coffee shop, I saw a sign: “We prefer payments by credit card or exact change because of the national coin shortage.”

Wait. What?

I felt as if I’d suffered a mini-stroke – actually, a decent parallel for shortages.

The global economy relies on a network of cargo ships and planes, trucks and trains – and the workers who load, unload and deliver goods. It’s a central nervous system, constantly working. When a clot clogs the system, it’s a distribution stroke.

THERE IS A SUPPLY-CHAIN SNAFU; it has several causes, it’s triggering inflation; and there are solutions. While somewhat comparable to shortages of housing in the 1920s, food in the 1940s, and fuel in the 1970s, this may be less a fiasco than a farce because of bad business decisions or incompetence, price gouging or the lack of a national industrial policy.

Meanwhile, stock shortages range from toilet paper and paper towels to chemicals needed for plastic pellets and PVC, plus computer chips, appliances, dry goods and even some food.

It’s still autumn, but anxious shoppers are scrambling for Christmas gift ideas because stores have warned of expected delays. (A Christmas tree trade group said people should buy soon and plan to pay more.)

FACTORS IN THE COMMERCIAL BOTTLENECKS include not just pandemic disruptions but lousy planning and exploiting COVID as an excuse to hike prices.

Pandemic closures meant drops in production. Also, shopping went online, warehouse operations were inadequate, hiring workers reluctant to work in low-wage and/or unsafe conditions became difficult.

Stalled container ships waiting at ports was foreshadowed in March when the ship “Ever Given” ran aground in the Suez Canal and blocked shipping there for six days.

Worldwide, weather disasters contributed, as have shortages of dockworkers, warehouse workers, and truckers.

The United States has become overly dependent on overseas suppliers, and the country can’t improve U.S. distribution for what’s not made here.

“How could such a shortage [of semiconductors] not have been anticipated by Intel and other major companies?” asked economist Dean Baker. “The pandemic undoubtedly skewed buying patterns to some extent, but it is difficult to see how it could have led to a two-year shortage.

“The problem was the failure of major manufacturers to anticipate demand growth for some reason,” Baker continued. “And there is no reason to believe that this failure would be affected by whether their chips were produced in South Korea, China, or Texas.”

One major aspect stems from work in the early 20^th century by Frederick Winslow Taylor, the efficiency guru of “scientific management” and “time-and-motion” studies. A variation, the “Just in time” approach to manufacturing and inventory, was proposed by Toyota engineer Taiichi Ohno in the 1950s to reduce “wasteful” production. The approach resulted in more “skinny inventories” at factories such as Caterpillar, where assembly-line workers referred to “Just in Time” as “Junk in Transit.”

The concept was that factories could quickly build and deliver goods as they were ordered, supposedly boosting profits by cutting costs – meaning workers.

“JUST IN TIME DELIVERY thus contributed to the growth of low-wage, often more precarious jobs, with workers recruited only when they would be needed,” said “U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition” author Kim Moody. “This constant squeezing of workers has fueled our 24/7 work culture and the mental health problems that go with it, while attempts to cut the price of labor have added to the growth of economic inequality, regardless of who sits in government.

“Decades of deregulation, privatization and market worship have left society vulnerable to the unbidden force of ‘just-in-time’ supply chains,” he continued.

(Ironically, the Just in Time practice showed its vulnerability in September when one COVID case at an auto-supply manufacturer in Vietnam forced Toyota to cut its September output by 40%.)

PRICES RISE. The Federal Reserve in October said companies are displaying a “greater ability to pass along cost increases to customers.”

Inflation became volatile, with tight supplies and higher demands. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index last month reported inflation at 5.4% from a year ago. Shippers who’d provided containers for about 35,000 books for $2,500 started demanding $25,000 for the same load. The price of lumber shot up more than 300% earlier this year, but since May dropped almost 70%.

“The risks are clearly now to longer and more persistent bottlenecks and thus to higher inflation,” said Fed Chair Jerome Powell. “Well into next year.”

Pandemic-related shutdowns did hamper some (not all) businesses, and when the economy started to open up, pent-up demand occurred. However, there’s been a personal-consumption slowdown in recent months, the Commerce Department reported Oct. 28: just 1.6% in the third quarter, compared to 12% in the previous period.

SOLUTIONS, NOT INACTION. Some conservatives hope the “invisible hand” of the market economy will right the ship. Others think greater government involvement is needed. Conservatives have blamed the supply-chain problem on too much government regulation; liberals cite an absence of an industrial policy to effectively coordinate the economy.

“The remedy is more government intervention in the economy, the opposite of Republican policies,” said Brandeis University professor Robert Kuttner. “We need more management of our supply chains.

According to the General Accounting Office, there are 58 separate federal programs involved with manufacturing in several agencies that don’t talk to each other, and no single White House official in charge,” he continued. “Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), with Republican co-sponsors, introduced legislation to create a high-level office of Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation at the White House.

“The White House released a comprehensive report on supply chains” in June, he added.

An industrial policy is needed, whether the planning and goals are restoring domestic production to make semiconductors or shipping containers in the U.S., or reestablish the needed network of trucks, etc.

The Biden administration launched a task force addressing the challenges, pressing for increased domestic production of items from medicine to batteries, and calling for a “90-day sprint” to relieve trade blockages.

Business needs to drop the Just in Time approach, and management needs to manage.

LABOR HAS A VITAL ROLE, too, as Teamsters President Jim Hoffa and AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Greg Regan told the White House. Unionizing truckers who drive unloaded ship cargoes out of Los Angeles ports would attract drivers by offering good jobs and security, and that will help alleviate the jam.

“Make sure they’re properly classified with decent wages and benefits,” Hoffa added.

Regan added that the bottlenecks and shortages are due to corporate greed. Even before the pandemic, the nation’s Class I freight railroads had cut its work force by 22% over the prior four years.

Labor leaders also met with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in October to talk about President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better and infrastructure initiatives. The House on Nov. 5 passed and sent to the Oval Office a $1 trillion measure to repair, replace and upgrade the country’s substandard infrastructure. Supply-chain woes eventually will benefit from improvements to 123,000 miles of roads and 45,000 bridges.

That’s a good step, but a long-term answer. Now, Americans:

* might shop local whenever possible,

* reward businesses that operate responsibly and punish price-gouging, job-killing companies, and

* demand representatives in government govern more than constantly campaign for reelection.