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if I voluntarily and with full information accept the price (for my labor, or my product or whatever), then it is fair. And the MiLB umps have been accepting it for 10 years and more.
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But they aren't accepting it anymore. I find if funny how all the MiLB umpires I talk to are willing to do what it takes to get wages back to par...yet you say there are pleanty of guys willing to work. How come the guys that ARE in MiLB aren't willing to work? Seems to me that eventually these other guys will also feel the same way after awhile.
I guess the only way to find out if MiLB can survive or not without them is to wait, watch, and see. A lot of it depends on us. If we decide to work or not. Most of the guys that I work with have already told me they can not bring themselves to scab if the MiLB guys walk out. I feel the same way. I'm not going to help MiLB screw over these guys. Why would I help MiLB? I am an UMPIRE!!! Shouldn't I be siding with other umpires?
The only thing I'd be gaining by working as a fill in would be personal gain. But I would actually be taking a pay cut to work the games...I WOULDN'T be workign with another professional umpire (which is one of the big reasons why i'd like to 'fill in' during a regular season when the MiLB guys ARE working), and I also wouldn't be working a game that I EARNED. I'd just be taking advantage of the situation.
Had I choose to go to umpire school when I was younger, and had I made it out of there and gone to professional umpiring, there is no doubt that that would have been the best feeling in the world. I could go work as a scab for these guys, and fool myself into thinking that I earned it, and that it's the same, but I'd just be lying to myself. I wouldn't have that feeling like I would if I were REALLY a professional umpire.
I can not in my right mind go work a game, when I know that me working the game is keeping some 25 year old out of it, somebody who really deserves it, and just wants to work and be able to support himself and his family. All I'd be doing by working is helping MiLB keep the umpires down, and hurting umpiring as a whole by showing people that umpires are just pawns...and that we aren't worth much.