[WhatWuzThatBlue]

Did I miss the part where he said that he was, wasn't or ever was associated with AMLU? That seemed to be the point of Mr. B's post, Jiggy.

Hey, here's some information for you:

Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Minor-league baseball defended its offer to umpires Wednesday, likening their jobs to an educational program rather than a lifetime career.

The minor-league umps voted this month to authorize a strike and are boycotting spring training. A strike decision hasn't been announced.


"Every umpire hired into the major leagues came from the minors. It's like being paid to go to school for the diploma and training you need for the chance at a very well-paid job," George Yund, a lawyer for the Professional Baseball Umpire Corp., said.

Management made what it called its "last, best and final offer" on Jan. 31, and umpires responded last Friday.

"We received a counterproposal that reflected fairly significant movement from their previous position, but it was not an acceptance of our last, best and final offer," Yund said.

Before this week, management negotiators have refused to discuss bargaining publicly.

The Association of Minor League Umpires, which represents about 220 umps in 16 leagues, said the average salary for minor-league umpires has remained unchanged for a decade -- it is about $15,000 at Triple-A, $12,000 at Double-A, $10,000 in full-season A-ball and $5,500 in rookie leagues. Those salaries reflect three to five month seasons.

Yund said umpires, who unionized in 2000, receive annual raises because of increased service time but the scale itself hasn't increased.

"When they first unionized, they agreed with us on realistic maximum numbers of years in each level of play and told us they wanted evaluations that let them know as soon as possible that they would not make it to the big leagues," he said. "This time, in both their rhetoric and the proposals they made, they talk about minor-league employment as though it is a year-round job in a lifetime career. That's simply not the case. It is a seasonal apprenticeship."

Yund said umps refused to work rather than accept a 42 percent increase in spring training compensation, arranged by the PBUC with major-league baseball.

Those aren't my words, those seem to be from the horse's mouth.