Can you support the Baseball Union without being a "Union Guy"

Is the MLBPA different from a regular union? Yes, I think it is. (Entertaining side story, last weekend at a local watering hole, a friend of mine described three bartenders who had no desire to serve any of the patrons as looking like "a bunch of union workers on break.") The following are a few reasons I think the MLBPA is different than a regular union:

1. Career length. Baseball players have a limited career and thus have a much more limited window of opportunity for employment than a traditional union worker. For example, a middle reliever, with little to no transferable traditional employment skills on account of being drafted out of high school and not attending college, has a 10-15 year career window at best. This is way different than a line worker in a factory that can presumable work 40-50 years in his position.
2. Reevaluation. The market constantly reevaluates a baseball player's "worth". Unlike a regular union worker, a baseball player's pay is evaluated (whether positively or negatively) every time his contract expires. In contrast, many union contracts include collectively bargained pay increases. While bottom-line baseball minimum wages do increase similar to regular unions, a large portion of baseball contracts are freely negotiated between the player and the team (or arbitrated) and increases/decreases in pay are the product of free market contract. If a team doesn't want to pay Player 'X' $15M in year four of a contract, the team and player don't agree to a contract and the player is free to see if another team is willing to pay him that amount. (See Lowe, Derek). If a player in decline is not worth $15M a season, then the market can reflect a new value of the player's services. A regular union contract "protects" the union worker from a similar decline in pay on account of a market change. For example, in a declining economy, it is likely there are people who would do the same job in a factory for less than the current employee, but the union contract prevents the company from reevaluating the employee's "worth".
3. Birthdays? I found this amusing. According to http://www.iww.org/organize/laborlaw/contract1.shtml, a typical union contract involves getting your birthday off as a holiday. That is definitely different than baseball. While it is nice not to have to work on your birthday, the fact that a regular union is able to require the company to give the worker that day off is comical. I wonder what the collective cost of every employee getting his/her birthday off costs?
   
4. Transferability of employers. Once a player meets the collectively bargained requirements to reach free agency, there are a number of different options for the player to take his services. Contrast this with a regular union whereby an employee is always free to change employers, but likely doesn't. This is because the union worker doesn't possess a special set of skills necessarily irreplaceable in the market place, which leads me to my next point.
5. Higher skill set. Baseball players, especially the top tier, have a much higher replacement cost than any regular union employee. A typical union worker can be paid in excess of 150% of what the free market (in non-union states) pays for the same job. Every employee in a company is replaceable, while it can be argued that above average baseball players are not.
6. Power? Between a regular union and the MLBPA, who has more power? Tough call. The MLBPA generally gets what it wants. Nobody wants to see replacement players, the MLBPA knows this, the owners know this, and the fans drive this. Compare this with a regular union where the employees are much easier to replace (the only hitch being, you know, the threat of violence to picket-line crossing individuals by union leaders).
   

That's it for now. More to come. 501 days until the CBA expires....