Marvin Miller  Marvin Miller, in full Marvin Julian Miller 
 (born April 14, 1917, Bronx, New York, U.S.—died November 27,
2012, New York City), American union leader who drove successful
efforts, as head of the Major League Baseball (MLB) Players
Association, to improve ballplayers’ labour rights,
revolutionizing the business of professional sports as a result.
Miller graduated from New York University (1938) with an
economics degree. After being employed as an economist by the
U.S. government during World War II, he began working with
labour unions, and in 1950 he took a position with the United
Steelworkers Union, eventually becoming its principal economic
adviser. In 1966 the 12-year-old MLB Players Association,
seeking to establish itself as a formal union to better address
players’ grievances, hired Miller as its executive director.
Within the first five years of his leadership, the union
negotiated a significant raise to the MLB minimum wage, a
generous player pension system, a first-ever collective-b