It's been said before, and it will probably be said again: 2022 has been the year of the union. Now that same movement may be mending a decades-long rift in baseball. After roughly fifty years of opposition, the Major League Baseball Player Association is attempting to unionize minor league baseball.

Recently, the player's association, which currently represents major leaguers, sent union authorization cards to roughly 5,000 contracted minor league players with plans to establish a new bargaining group for the players within the larger association.

"Minor leaguers represent our game's future and deserve wages and working conditions that befit elite athletes who entertain millions of baseball fans nationwide," the executive director of the players' union, Tony Clark, said in a statement. "They're an important part of our fraternity and we want to help them achieve their goals both on and off the field."

Previously, the association had declined to represent the minor leaguers at least in part because the interests of minor league and major league players are sometimes at odds.

Minor league players might be the future of the sport, but they reportedly aren't being treated very well by the teams they work for during the season.

"The working conditions facing these players have been nothing short of offensive," Clark wrote in a letter to player agents.

According to the non-profit Advocates for Minor Leaguers, the "vast majority" of minor leaguers are paid "less than $12,000 -below the federal poverty line". In 2022, MLB players make an average of $4 million, with a minimum of $700,000.

"Poverty wages, oppressive reserve rules, discipline without due process, ever-expanding offseason obligations, appropriation of intellectual property, substandard attention to player health and safety, and a chronic lack of respect for minor leaguers as a whole," Clark wrote in the letter, "these cancers on our game exist because minor league players have never had a seat at the bargaining table. It's time for that to change."

Major League Baseball (MLB) took over control of the minor leagues two years ago, and it's maintained the position that minor league positions are more like short-term apprenticeships for those hoping to land a higher-paying spot in the majors eventually.

In a recent letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the minor leagues, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred arguably downplayed the difficulties faced by players, arguing that the majority of players land high signing bonuses. Manfred said that players who don't earn high signing bonuses aren't in the leagues for long anyway, likening them to seasonal employees with schooling or regular jobs on the side.

The push to improve working conditions for minor leaguers has been growing in recent years, and that pressure has led to some limited positive change.

In 2021, the MLB raised the pay for minor leaguers from between around $290 and $502 per week to between $400 and $700 per week. In the coming season, teams will be required to provide housing to players, another change introduced by the MLB.

In another win for players, in July, the minor leagues agreed to a $185 million settlement in an 8-year-old case for allegedly violating minimum wage laws. In response to pressure from advocates, the Senate Judiciary Committee also recently said it will hold a hearing to review baseball's exemption from antitrust action.