Two Takes on the Passing of Marvin Miller: Take One

SOCIETAL DIVIDENDS FROM TRANSFORMATIONAL LABOR LEADERS:  A EULOGY FOR MARVIN MILLER
By: Stephen F. Ross*

Congress enacted the Wagner Act[1] in 1935 to grant workers an effective right to organize and bargain collectively.  In a lengthy textual exposition entitled “Findings and Declaration of Policy,”[2] Congress sought to achieve four major goals:  reducing industrial strife, restoring mass purchasing power, promoting a fairer distribution of economic resources, and furthering self-government by employees.[3]  Of course, like all legislation, the Wagner Act reflects a prediction that collective bargaining will generally achieve these goals, rather than a certainty that this will be reflected in every industry.

In reviewing the accomplishments of the legendary former leader of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Marvin Miller, who passed away in late November,[4] it is clear that the Wagner Act gave him tools to promote a fairer distribution of resources between owners and players (economic estimates suggest players were paid less than twenty percent of their economic value[5]) and furthered the role of players in the governance of the game.[6]  On the other hand, even if we credit Miller with the advances achieved by professional athletes in other major league sports as well, the total number of these athletes hardly promotes a significant macroeconomic effect, and it remains a matter of controversy and dispute whether industrial disruption was exaggerated or minimized by the rights granted under the Wagner Act.[7]  For society, however, the principal effect of Miller’s contributions was an additional dividend that is consistent with, but not anticipated by, the Wagner Act’s drafters:  the beneficial transformation of an industry that increased output and rendered output more responsive to consumer preference.

Although baseball owners believed that competition among them for the services of elite players would ruin the game,[8] Miller’s effort led to free markets; as a trained economist, Miller recognized that these markets would improve the quality of the talent (players now are better trained, and skilled players stay in the game longer) as well as the more efficient distribution of player talent among teams.[9]  Once owners were required to compete for player services, this increased their incentives to innovate to improve revenue, including new stadia designed to attract more consumers and the increased availability of games on television and via the internet.

The United States Supreme Court has imposed a “duty of fair representation” on labor unions.[10]  Because baseball is organized subject to the control of thirty club owners who act in their own economic interests, with a Commissioner whose power over economic matters is limited, in some sense the union’s executive director has a greater incentive to consider the best interests of the entire game (since the better the game, the more money available to be shared by players) than any other individual.[11]  Miller performed this role as well, observing astutely that owners who colluded in the 1980s to avoid player competition, thereby harming their own teams, were guiltier of heinous conduct than the infamous Pete Rose, who gambled on his own team to win.[12]

When we aggregate the benefits to baseball fans of Miller’s contribution, they surely exceed even the exponential economic gains for the players themselves.  In this way, he ranks with John L. Lewis (who transformed the mining industry by facilitating its automation), A. Phillip Randolph (who sought equal rights for African American railroad workers), and Cesar Chavez (who organized farmworkers) as truly transformational in ways not foreseen by federal labor law.

 

Preferred Citation: Stephen F. Ross, Societal Dividends from Transformational Labor Leaders: A Eulogy for Marvin Miller, PENN ST. L. REV. THE FORUM (Jan. 24, 2013), http://www.pennstatelawreview.org/the-forum/.