The political psychologist George Lakoff has long said that the right wing trumps the left when it comes to framing issues. One of the right’s best coups is titling an anti-union movement “right to work.” Essentially, what they are advocating is to give employers the power to hire employees who do not join a union. When it comes to one or two people, it sounds innocent enough. However, the net effect of permitting employees to work as free agents, rather than as part of a consolidated work force, is that workers can then bid against one another to determine who is willing to work for the least. Unenlightened employers love this situation, because the ultimate effect for them is to reduce the cost of labor. The politicians who represent businesses (primarily Republicans) have branded this idea with the partial misnomer of “right to work.” What could sound more American?

Frustrated by the Republicans’ framing of the issue, labor supporters, including most Democrats, have given a more realistic spin to the phenomena. Many on the left call it “the right to work for less.” This response is clever, and it clearly describes the situations in which many blue-collar workers find themselves when trying to find a job that will pay them a livable wage.

Is there a situation that might be a middle-ground between the “right to work” and the “right to work for less?” I think that there is, and this situation, while not occurring generally, raises interesting questions.

Suppose that your name is Albert Pujols, and you are currently a slugging designated hitter for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (does any team have a more cumbersome name?). A little more than two years ago, you signed a ten-year contract with the team. It totals $255 million; averaging over $25 million each year of the contract. You rejected a contact for less from your former team, the St. Louis Cardinals, and now you’re having regrets about the whole deal. You know that $25 million a year is far more than you need to live. And the last two years have not worked out for you. You’re not nearly as comfortable on the West Coast as you were in the Midwest, and your hitting statistics bear that out. Truth be told, you want to tell the Angels that they can keep the approximately $200 million that they still owe you. What you really want to do is to ask the Cardinals if they will sign you to a reasonable deal; something like $15 million for three years with performance incentives that could boost your annual pay up to $20 million.

The way the rules of baseball are structured, Albert Pujols couldn’t do this. There are three reasons. First, there is no precedent for a team and a player mutually agreeing to void a contract. Second, if Pujols decided to tell the Angels that he’s retiring (which would free the Angels of their financial obligations to him) he could not play for the Cardinals without sitting out a year. Third, the Players Association would strongly object to him “walking away from the contract.” They fear that a precedent could be set and it would work to the owners’ advantage. When teams think they have paid far too much for a player, they would put all kinds of pressure on that player to retire or somehow breach the contract. This would not be an idle threat; almost every team is saddled with one or two contracts that they would love to void and if that became possible the sanctity of all contracts would then be at risk. It would be a very legitimate area of concern for the Players Association (which is essentially the bargaining union for the players).

However, if an occasional exception could be made, such as in the Pujols case, it would represent a hybrid between the right wing’s “right to work” and the left’s “right to work for less.” What it would represent would be “the right to be free to work for less.” It’s not unprecedented; when Lee Iacocca became CEO of Chrysler Motors, he worked for a dollar a year. That didn’t do any harm to the wages and salaries of other Chrysler employees; in fact it probably helped them. Iacocca brought the company out of bankruptcy and back to profitability. He didn’t need the money from a salary, so it was a “win-win.”

I’m just wondering if we couldn’t address this whole issue under the umbrella of “the right to work for less.” Framed that way, workers would know the real meaning of what the right wing calls “right to work.” That would go a long way in preventing workers from being the victims of the forces that historically been on their backs; pressure to work for less. While protecting those in greatest need of financial remuneration, it would allow others to walk away from various forms of the “golden parachute” and give them more personal freedom.

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It might seem like an odd analogy, but the more that I view some of the policy changes by President Barack Obama, the more they seem to bear a similarity to the changes implemented by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While I’m just an occasional Facebook user, I can’t help but notice how significant changes occur overnight, with no advance warning or even foreshadowing. Generally they are confusing, at least in the beginning, and tend to frustrate the Facebook base.

Our non-profit organization sponsors events for students. I can’t help but notice how when we invite students to the events through Facebook, the responses that are available to invitees change frequently, for no apparent reason and with no clear explanation. An example would be how Facebook formerly made it easy for an invitee to respond “maybe;” now they’ve complicated it without explanation.

I knew this “pulling the rug out from underneath us” reminded me of something. Unfortunately, it is the way in which President Barack Obama seems to turn on a dime on important policy issues. Some people theorize that it’s because he chooses to negotiate with himself before he negotiates with political opponents. Whatever the motivation, it’s frustrating, because you wake up in the morning and find that like Facebook, he has made changes without explanation or forewarning.

A few examples include:

1. Abandoning the public option in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009. The public option was the linchpin of insurance reform, because it essentially meant that insurance companies would have to compete against the efficiency of government-run program that, by definition, would save money because it was not profit-driven. One day the public option was part of President Obama’s plan; the next day, it mysteriously disappeared.

2. Reducing the payroll tax, more accurately called premiums for Social Security, in the middle of the 2010 year-end lame duck session with Congress, a Democratic Congress at that. No one was asking for the cut even if it would help working people, because it would also hurt them by downgrading the long-term solvency of Social Security.

The payroll tax is regressive in nature; it takes the same percentage of out of a paycheck for someone earning $1,000 a year as someone earning 100 times as much. After that it gets worse, because following the first $106,800,  the tax is not applied to earnings. Most wage earners have all their income subject to Social Security and Medicare withholding. But if your name is Albert Pujols, and you will be paid $252 million over the next ten years, you will pay into Social Security from only four-tenths of one percent of your income. The remaining $250,932,000 that he earns between now and 2021 will not be subject to payroll withholding.

There’s clearly something wrong with that picture. If President Obama was going to support reducing the payroll tax in order to help ordinary wage earners, then he needed to insist on raising the top salary to which Social Security contributions applied. Perhaps there needed to be no ceiling, which then would make it economically sound to reduce the rate for low and middle income workers. But this was not the path that the President took, and it happened out of nowhere. The Republicans didn’t even ask for it from him. This was a classic case of him apparently negotiating with himself.

3. In the fall of 2011, President Obama insisted that if the payroll contributions were going to remain reduced, the lost revenue would be made up by rescinding some of the Bush tax cuts of the early 2000’s. The Bush tax cuts were especially sweet for everyone making over $250,000. President Obama is willing to maintain the status quo for those making between $250,000 and one million dollars. He was merely asking that the maximum tax rate for income earned above and beyond one million dollars a year be taxed at a rate of 39.6% rather than 36%.

The Republicans call this class warfare against the wealthy. For months, the President stood up to this specious argument and said that he would veto any bill that did not raise taxes on the very wealthy. Then in mid-December, he collaborated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to say that the Democrats were no longer wedded to raising the taxes on the very rich. Again, no Democrat asked him to back away from his principles; he just decided to do so. The Republicans were like sharks who sense blood. Even though this issue is not completely resolved, it seems as if restoring previous tax rates for the wealthy is history. Republicans have won that battle.

So as strange as it seems, when I wake up each day, I am a little trepidatious that Barack Obama or Mark Zuckerberg is going to blindside me and millions of other people with an unannounced change. Zuckerberg I can live with. But with President Obama, it would be very comforting to know that when he sacrifices principles or liberal policies, he does so under pressure. What he has done all too frequently is give us change we cannot believe in. I hope that changes.

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A frequent criticism of  government is that it acts slowly and in a cumbersome fashion. That may be true. However, such conduct does not occur solely in the public domain.

In the private sector, the St. Louis Cardinals and top player Albert Pujols are taking days, weeks, months, even years to do what can be done in a half hour. That’s inefficiency unmatched by any level of government. How difficult can it be to work out an agreement where everybody’s going to be rich?

So here’s what a half hour negotiation session between Bill DeWitt, Jr., owner of the Cardinals, and Albert Pujols could look like.  No attorneys allowed and Tony LaRussa can’t come in with the “non-political” Glenn Beck to offer advice.

I’m happy to play the role of facilitator for a 0% cut.

“Bill, you know Albert; Albert you know Bill.  Okay these negotiations don’t have to be hard; it’s not like we’re trying to bring peace to the Middle East.   We should be able to get this done in less than a half hour.

Here’s the deal: I’m going to give you a range of choices in four areas that are important to each of you. With or without a No. 2 pencil, indicate your choice(s) to each question. After you’ve made your choice and completed the form, we’ll split the difference on all of them. Neither side will feel any pain with the results; you’ll all be rich when it’s said and done.

1.      Salary per year:

a)      $16 mil

b)      $18 mil

c)      $20 mil

d)     $22 mil

e)      $24 mil

f)       $26 mil

g)      $28 mil

h)      $30 mil

2.      Number of years of contract:

a)      1 year

b)      2 years

c)      3 years

d)     4 years

e)      5 years

f)       6 years

g)      7 years

h)      8 years

i)        9 years

j)        10 years

3.      No trade clause (i.e. Albert can choose if he does not want to be traded to another team.  He could alternately list which teams would be acceptable to him for a trade). So, should the contract include a “no-trade” clause?

a)      Yes

b)      Partial; Albert can list ____ (fill in the blank) number of teams to which he would agree to be traded. For the first year, the names of the teams are: __________________ (fill in the blank). This list can be changed every year.

c)      No

4.      Special considerations (each side picks two; each side can veto two)

a)      Albert is consulted on managerial change

b)      Albert has veto power over managerial change

c)      Albert is consulted on general manager change

d)     Albert has veto power over general manager change

e)      Albert can take 0.5% of his salary and invest it into ownership of the team, up to a maximum of five years.

f)       Albert can become manager of Ballpark Village and develop the area entirely for charitable, educational, health care, or low-income housing use.

g)      Albert can take 0.5% of his salary in any given year and have that amount matched by the Cardinals for the purpose of reimbursing the city of St. Louis and/or the state of Missouri for the tax abatements that the Cardinals previously negotiated.

h)      Albert can take 0.5% of his salary in any given year and have that amount matched by the Cardinals for the purpose of meeting basic economic and social needs in Albert’s home country of the Dominican Republic.

You have ten minutes to write down your responses. We will then take ten minutes to discuss “splitting the differences;” i.e. negotiating. Then we’ll take ten minutes to make sure that we’re all fully aware of the terms and satisfied.

*** 30 minute interval for negotiations  ***

“Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you and a business doing pleasure with you. Let’s now go to Steak ’n Shake.  Who’s treating?”

The post Got a moment? Let’s negotiate Albert Pujols’ contract appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Albert Pujols has a unique opportunity to not only change the economics of baseball, but also to set an example of restraint for all wealthy individuals.

Pujols is considered  the best player in baseball. He is the only player in the history of the game who has hit over .300, smacked over 30 homers, and driven in more than 100 runs in each of his first ten years. No one else has come close. Pujols’ numbers do not just hover around these milestones, they surpass them by eye-popping margins.

The Cardinals have exercised an option that obliges Pujols to play for them in 2011. Wisely, team management is taking steps to negotiate what might be a lifetime contract with Pujols this off-season. If they don’t, he would hit the open market of free agency following the 2011 year.

For nearly 70 years, the symbol of Cardinal baseball has been Stan (the Man) Musial. Pujols and Musial have much in common: excellence on the field, leadership, a calm demeanor, fan friendliness, and a commitment to both charity and social justice.  When the Cardinal roster integrated in 1954, Musial established a bond with African-American players. He joined them in pressuring team ownership to insist on housing the team in integrated housing in spring training.

Pujols’ charitable activities have addressed numerous needs in St. Louis as well as his home country,  the Dominican Republic. On the justice front, he has expressed his unhappiness with next year’s All-Star Game being in Arizona, the state with the most restrictive immigration law in the union.  There has been speculation that he might lead a boycott of the game by Latin American players.

Players have considerably more power in the modern age, in large part because in 1969, Curt Flood, a former teammate of Musial, refused a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies. He said that he did not want to be a “well-paid slave” who did not have the freedom to bargain with teams of his choice. It is this very right that gives Pujols leverage in negotiations with the Cardinals. Musial played in the era of the “reserve clause” where teams had the power to renew or trade a player’s contract throughout his career.

Pujols has made over $100 million in the first decade of his career. Now, the bar has been raised: St. Louisan Ryan Howard, who plays for the Philadelphia Phillies, is  making $25 million per year. The Cardinals would be fortunate if they could sign Pujols at that rate for what is expected to be the remaining ten or so years of his career.

That would put Pujols’ lifetime earnings in baseball in excess of $300 million. In contrast, Musial made only $1.26 million – total – during his 22-year career. If Musial’s salaries were adjusted for inflation, they would be around $7 million;, slightly more than 2% of Pujols’ projected earnings.

To put things further in perspective, the most Musial ever made in a single season was $100,000, in 1958 and 1959. Now here’s the kicker: after batting .255 in 1959, Musial voluntarily took a 20-percent pay cut before the 1960 season. “I’m glad to sign the contract,” he said. “A couple of times in the past the Cardinals had me sign for more than what we agreed upon orally. This year I thought I’d be kind to them.”

The leverage that Curt Flood gave Albert Pujols and all modern players in maximizing their earning powers did not come without a cost. He did more for the players’ union than any other individual. A strong union can guarantee high salaries, so long as it has exclusive bargaining rights and its members do not try to undercut one another.

Let’s suppose that Albert Pujols agreed to play the balance of his career at $10 million per annum. He could justify this by saying that no one needs more than $10 million per year, and it is still a king’s ransom to someone who grew up poor in the Dominican Republic. He might also add that winning is an important value to him, and that by lowering the proportion of the Cardinals payroll than he consumes the more money the team has to sign other quality players.

But there are problems with the $10 million solution. First, the terms of his 2011 contract guarantee that he will receive a salary of over $14 million. The maximum annual salary reduction that a team can impose on a player is 20%. If Pujols took a 20% cut, he would still be making $11,200,000. To get down to $10 million, he would have to wait until 2013; the maximum reduction over a two year period is 30%, and that would take him to $9.8 million.

There are 600 players who are active in the Major Leagues at any time during the season. Surely one or several of them have generous bones in their bodies. So why is it that no player has said “enough is enough;” I don’t need a high salary; others in our society need the money more than I?

The primary reason this doesn’t happen is loyalty to one’s brethren.  Any player who voluntarily takes a pay cut is (a) lowering the mean salary for players, and (b) giving greedy owners the wedge of telling players that they will not be re-signed unless they “take one for the team;” not just the baseball team, but all of us in society who need the money more than the players do. However, history and common sense tell us that whatever additional salary a player is not paid will go into the owners’ pockets; not for the general populace, even in the form of reduced ticket prices.

It is a sad situation when it becomes virtually impossible for a player of Albert Pujols’ integrity to voluntarily take a pay reduction as a monetary and symbolic gesture of expressing his belief that he has enough money and others need it more.   He would be a pariah among his peers; a “do-gooder” who would be doing harm to the financial well-being of his peers because he would be lowering the salary bar.

So let’s be as realistic as we can. If Pujols signed a ten-year contract at an average salary of $15 – $18 million, he would be receiving a raise, but far less than he could receive on the open market. His actions would not be those of Robin Hood, but they would represent an effort to exercise some restraint in spiraling salaries. Some very wealthy individuals in our society, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Ted Turner,  are giving enormous amounts to philanthropic causes.  You might be surprised to learn that,  not  long ago, Donald Trump proposed a 40% tax on the rich to wipe out our national debt (the figure would be much higher now).

So, suppose that Albert Pujols joined with other high-profile athletes and entertainers to say there is a certain obscenity to excessive salaries at a time when more than a fifth of the American people are out of work or under-employed, and that number is much greater in developing countries.

At the height of the McCarthy hearings, Joseph Welch asked the senator from Wisconsin, “Have you no sense of decency?”  In a thoroughly different venue, it’s something that could be asked of athletes and entertainers and the owners who hire them.  Albert, you need not take a pay cut, but you could do much for our society by exercising restraint and urging your peers to do likewise.  Like Stan, you too would then be “the man.”

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Like many people, two of my primary interests are politics and sports.  They both lend themselves to statistical analysis; they have “seasons” (in both cases too long); and winners are sometimes the wealthy front-runners (George W. Bush or the New York Yankees); other times they are among those with the least resources (Dennis Kucinich or the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays).  It is no accident that Nate Silver, the publisher of what is considered to be the most reliable political forecaster (Fivethirtyeight.com) developed his skills handicapping baseball players through a method called baseball sabermetrics.

Thursday we will turn a statistical eye at the history of African-American players on the Cardinals.   For now, let us just say that yesterday, for the first time in 56 years, the Cardinals opened the season with no African-American players on its roster.

The current team is a very good one; reigning National League Central Division champions and odds-on favorite to repeat this year.  It’s a likable team; there are some great hustlers like Brendan Ryan, Skip Schumaker, and Ryan Ludwick.  Albert Pujols may be the finest player to ever don a Cardinal uniform; Matt Holiday is productive, Colby Rasmus is developing into a future star and Yadier Molina may be the game’s most exciting catcher.

The historian Ken Burns produced a wonderful series on PBS called “Baseball.”  He focuses on the evolution of the game, featuring its superstars (far too little attention paid to Stan Musial).  But as a historian, he weaves the history of baseball into the social and economic trends of this country’s legacy.  He has an “inning” (chapter) called “Shadow Ball” about the Negro Leagues that provided separate and unequal opportunities for African-Americans, primarily in the 1920s through the 1940s.  As America changed, so did baseball.  In September, 1945, five months after assuming office, President Harry S Truman began the process of integrating the army.  Only a month later, Brooklyn Dodger general manager Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a professional contract.  After a year in the minor leagues, Jackie Robinson was on the Dodger opening day roster in 1947 (I feel lucky to have been born the next day and to have always lived in an integrated baseball era).  Eleven weeks later Cleveland Indians general manager Bill Veeck signed Larry Doby who took the field for the team that July 5.  Baseball was integrated; the trend was inexorable.  The first African-American to play for the Cardinals was Tom Alston in 1952.  The last team to integrate was the Boston Red Sox in 1959.

As the country struggled with integration, so did baseball.  Most of the early great African-American players endured treatment in the south ranging from separate and unequal to outright harassment including death threats.  Spring training in Florida was not much better; finally in 1964 a group of African-Americans on the Cardinals convinced owner Gussie Busch to insist on housing the team under one roof in an integrated hotel in St. Petersburg.

The 1964 Cardinal team gelled into a winning team with a special bond between African- American, Hispanic and white players.  But with two weeks remaining in the season they were six and a half games behind the Philadelphia Phillies with a dozen games to play.  What ensued thereafter was remarkable; the Cardinals became a winning juggernaut and the Phillies “pholded.”  Their demise is generally attributed to manager Gene Mauch’s decision to repeatedly use pitchers Chris Short and Jim Bunning on only two days rest.  If you’ve been watching the U.S. Senate lately, you may have noticed that Bunning, now a U.S. Senator from Kentucky, may have suffered permanent damage from the debacle.  The Cardinals, under the cool guidance of manager Johnny Keane, kept winning and when the season was over; their record of 93-69 was one game better than the Phillies and Cincinnati Reds.

The Cardinals entered the World Series as decided underdogs to the vaunted New York Yankees.  As mentioned previously, the Cardinals won the series four games to three and thirty-one years later the seven-games were chronicled by historian David Halberstam in his book October 1964.  A review from Amazon.com states:

The 1964 World Series between the Yankees and Cardinals was coated in myth from the get-go. The Yankees represented the establishment: white, powerful, and seemingly invincible. The victorious Cards, on the other hand, were baseball’s rebellious future: angry and defiant, black, and challenging. Their seven-game barnburner, played out against a backdrop of an America emerging from the Kennedy assassination, escalating the war in Vietnam, and struggling with civil rights, marked a turning point–neither the nation, nor baseball, would ever be quite so innocent again.

On July 2, midway through the season, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the public.  It prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment.

If you lived in St. Louis, there was a synergy of events as the country moved towards tearing down racial barriers and the Cardinals won the World Series with a truly integrated team.  It was a year when black and white St. Louisans joined the freedom riders, traveling south to face the angry voices in opposition to integration.  It was also a year in which the Cardinals played in a stadium at Grand and Dodier Avenues in north St. Louis.  No one could attend a game without walking through a sea of poverty and seeing faces that bore the stress of years of racial discrimination.

The country was in a period of racial transition; one that we would learn later would have many triumphs and moments of despair.  That continues today.  The 1964 Cardinals showed that baseball was right in the middle of the struggle.  If you were working and hoping for more racial equality and justice, it was a wonderful time to be a Cardinal fan, but the future of the team’s play on the field and unique composition of the roster were always unpredictable variables.  And so it is still today.

Link to Part II
Link to Part III

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