Dispute over umpires’ pay leaves SLO County high school baseball season in disarray
The San Luis Obispo County prep baseball season is facing a chaotic start as a bitter dispute over umpire pay threatens to upend the schedule while high schools scramble to find replacement officials to call games.
Already contentious talks ended with no resolution on Friday, and schools are now moving to a Plan B that could see most games played on Saturdays and officiated by out-of-area umpires.
The association of local umpires and school representatives both say that negotiations have failed over a proposed per-game pay increase, with each side accusing the other of being unfair and unreasonable.
The umpires, represented by the Los Padres Baseball Umpire Association, are seeking an increase in their pay rate that now stands at $92 a game, aside from additional mileage and other job-related reimbursement.
The umpires are demanding $105 per game this season escalating to $125 over three years — arguing the current rates don’t compensate them adequately for the work they do.
But representatives of 16 schools in the Central Coast Athletic Association, which spans from Santa Maria to Paso Robles, have fired back, saying that the umpires have negotiated in bad faith because the rates are set by the California Interscholastic Federation sections that govern high school sports, and a new precedent of how fees are determined could potentially cost districts thousands of dollars.
The umpires who call Central Coast games in the CIF Central Section already are getting the highest fee rate in the state, on par with the CIF Southern Section that covers a large swath of Southern California, according to Atascadero Unified School District Athletic Director Sam DeRose, a representative of the CCAA.
As of Friday, the CCAA walked away from the negotiating table, and the umpires also say they’ve given up hope of working out a deal.
The season is scheduled to begin later this month for most SLO County teams. DeRose said that most local high school baseball games will need to be played on Saturdays versus the traditional weekday schedule.
The CCAA is working with neighboring baseball umpire units from Fresno, Bakersfield, Santa Cruz and San Joaquin counties to provide coverage for local baseball games, the association said in a memo shared with local media.
“The CCAA welcomes any LBPUA umpires to enter their name into the growing pool of out-of-town umpires to provide umpiring services for the 2023 baseball season for our local high school athletes,” the group said in the memo. “The season’s game days will look significantly different with most contests happening on Saturdays. The CCAA athletic directors will continue to work on rescheduling contests to allow for all of our scheduled games to be played.”
What the umpires say
Brian Ashbrook, who leads the umpires’ association, said that pay hasn’t kept up and that the number of umpires associated with the LPBUA has declined from about 60 to around 40.
Over the last four years, Ashbrook said the LPBUA’s membership dropped by nearly half with as few as 30 working umpires, before “we brought it back up to 38 this year.”
He said umpires can make significantly more calling junior college and youth games, though the schools have countered those comparisons aren’t relevant to high school sports.
“The LPBUA is attempting to get a fair game fee for its umpires,” Ashbrook said. “The CCAA is trying to keep a CIF system in place that keeps officials’ pay low. The CCAA is doing this by spending more money on travel and umpires than it would by meeting the LPBUA request.”
Ashbrook said the LPBUA lost a first-year umpire last year due to job demands and pay, and he fears others will quit without improvements.
“They just didn’t want to take the abuse from the coaches and the parents,” Ashbrook said. “You have a 20-year-old kid trying to deal with a 35- to 40-year-old adult. It’s sometimes difficult. That’s a huge issue of why we’re losing them, but we’ve also had signs that when we’re asking and getting paid more money, it’s becoming tempting for folks to join, and we work with the schools to try to reduce (abuse), and we think we’ve got a winning combination.”
What the schools say
DeRose, however, contends that if the umpires want to alter the pay rates, they need to go through the CIF Central Section process and not try to alter the existing system, which could have statewide reverberations.
“If they want to change the rates, they need to go through CIF, not us,” DeRose said. “These actions if left unchecked will reverberate statewide. Educational-based high school athletics are being threatened. ”
DeRose sent local media several documents related to the dispute, contending that if the CCAA were to increase the game fees for baseball umps, it could ultimately cost each school as much as $28,840 more a year if every officiating group also receives similar increases.
“The LPBUA argues that giving them the increased game fees would only cost each school $728,” the CCAA said in a letter to Ashbrook. “What the myopic viewpoint of the LPBUA doesn’t understand is that anything we give to them we would give to every official group in the LPOA (Los Padres Officials Association).”
The Los Padres Officials Association is a collection of groups that represent high school officials across a variety of sports.
The letter added: “We, the CCAA, are concerned about all of our schools and officials units. The CCAA respectfully declines the counter-offer of the LPBUA. The CCAA has now officially ended our relationship with the LPBUA.”
DeRose said that the schools are willing to pay more this season than what they would otherwise to bring in umpires from out of the area, arguing that agreeing to the LPBUA game fee demands would be harmful to the districts in the long run.
“Do I disagree that they deserve more money or anybody in high school sports, like coaches, should have more money?” DeRose said. “No, but when you hold somebody hostage with a season and force us to do what we have to do, our stand is pretty simple. It’s based on principle, fairness, integrity.”
Negotiations end with no resolution
A CCAA document shared with The Tribune said that the $92 rate increase is up $7 per game from last year and the schools offered additional money for mileage, but they still couldn’t come to an agreement.
DeRose said the umpires kept CIF Southern Section rates when the local schools moved into the Central Section in 2018-19. The current rates used on the Central Coast now are better than those paid by schools in the Bay Area and other California areas with a high cost of living, DeRose said.
“What the LPBUA leadership has tried to accomplish by attempting to strong-arm our schools will not happen here,” they wrote in a letter to Ashbrook. “We have been privy to many of the emails that the LPBUA leadership sent to your membership reflecting a sense of the LPBUA becoming the champions of the state officiating world by getting more from us. Quotes of ‘everybody else is watching and waiting’ do not sit well with us. We will not go outside of the CIF fee schedules.”
Ashbrook said that the umpires made the dispute public after talks stalled, leading to a public counter-response from the schools..
“The CCAA has known about our request for months, but parents and coaches have been kept in the dark until recently,” Ashbrook said in an email. “Our efforts started last fall with a request of $125 per game. In good faith, we lowered it to $105, $115, and $125 over three years to get talks going. Then, after the LPBUA membership voted 34-0 against accepting a $92 per game, we changed the three-year request to a 1-year proposal of $105 with the hope the CCAA would work with us in our efforts moving forward.”
Ashbrook said in an email: “Sam DeRose is right. What the LPBUA is attempting to do will reverberate across the state. The LPBUA is attempting to get a fair game fee for its umpires.”
Ashbrook added: “But there is no hope in working with the CCAA.”
As far as the impact on students, any schedule updates have yet to be announced as schools work to make arrangements for new umpires.
This story was originally published February 12, 2023 at 9:00 AM.
%20Cropped.jpg)