At the end of February, Kyle Johnson will pack some bags, say goodbye to his wife and his two young daughters, and make the 2,800-mile journey from his home in Post Falls, Idaho, to Port St. Lucie, Fla., to spend a strenuous month of volunteer work in the service of an industry that grossed nearly $10 billion in revenue in 2016. Johnson, a 27-year-old college graduate with a degree in economics, exists in the top 0.001 percentile of talent in his field, but like all players in affiliated minor league baseball, he will endure the mandatory rigors of spring training in exchange for no compensation whatsoever.

Minor league baseball players do not get paid for spring training. Johnson’s team, the Mets, will provide daily breakfast and lunch at their complex and a small stipend for living expenses, but not enough to cover all the costs. He hopes to borrow a car from a family member in Orlando. Two years ago, he rented a room from a local woman he found on Craiglist. Last year, he spent the month crashing with a ballplayer friend in the Marlins organization in Jupiter, Fla., about 40 miles south of the Mets’ spring home.

The average Major League Baseball player made about $4.4 million in 2016, but Johnson can afford to play professional baseball only because his wife, Susan, works as both a part-time photographer and a full-time teen outreach coordinator for an Idaho non-profit, assisting victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. During a phone conversation with USA TODAY Sports last week, Johnson referred to Susan as “a goddess,” “a brilliant woman,” and “a rock star” for her ability to support their family as he pursues his lifelong dream of playing in the big leagues while earning what amounts to significantly less than the national minimum wage.

“It’s really difficult,” Johnson said. “There’s a lot of other things I could be doing to provide for my family, and allow us to be more stable — we could buy a house. So that weighs on me, especially right now, when I’m getting ready to take off again. Am I doing the right thing for my family?”

Johnson is among four active minor league players attempting to join a lawsuit against Major League Baseball and its teams, and he’s the first active player involved in the case to speak about it publicly. Spearheaded by attorney and former minor leaguer Garrett Broshuis and first filed in February of 2014, the suit currently includes 41 named plaintiffs and is awaiting a second ruling on class-action certification before it can head toward a trial. It seeks to apply the terms of the Fair Labor Standards Act — i.e. minimum wage — to minor league players, who earn as little as $1100 a month at the rookie level, only get paid during the season, and do not receive overtime pay.

A 25th round pick by the Los Angeles Angels in the 2012 draft who signed to a $5,000 bonus, Johnson will not know until the end of spring training where the Mets intend for him to start the 2017 season. The particulars of minor-league life alone are exhausting: Clubs typically provide players hotel rooms for the first few days of an assignment, but minor leaguers need to find their own housing beyond that. Trades, promotions and demotions can come with little warning, forcing players to scramble to find places to sleep or new roommates to cover the rent when someone else leaves. Air mattresses are ubiquitous. Johnson prefers playing road games, because road trips come with real beds in hotel rooms and $25 of per diem meal money.

But it’s the salary that’s insulting. Minor league players form the backbone of a baseball industry that has seen the average big-league pay rate climb about 10,000% since the dawn of free agency in the mid-1970s, but their pay hasn’t grown enough in that same period to cover inflation. Johnson, in the fifth year of the standard seven-year minor league contract signed by amateur players at the outset of their pro careers, expects to make about $2,400 a month in 2017, and only from April until September. During the offseason, he foots his own bills for his multi-hour daily workouts, runs an online business, and gives private training sessions to help make ends meet.

Minor league players excluded from teams’ 40-man big-league rosters are not represented by the MLB Players Association, so Johnson and the majority of his minor-league brethren have no negotiating leverage whatsoever to jockey for higher pay. MLBPA communications director Greg Bouris told USA TODAY Sports that the union is monitoring the players’ lawsuit and that MLBPA supports all workers’ right to organize, but that it could not further comment publicly about the specifics of the case or the possibility of incorporating minor league players into its ranks due to the ongoing legal proceedings.

As a player in the high minors — Johnson split last year between Class AA Binghamton and Class AAA Las Vegas — his services will inevitably be necessary and beneficial to Major League Baseball at some point in 2017, when an injured big-league pitcher needs rehab work or a fast-tracked bonus-baby prospect needs opportunities to hit with runners in scoring position. But the fortunes inherent in both operating and playing for a big-league ball club do not extend to those toiling in the minors.

Johnson isn’t looking to get rich playing minor league baseball. He just wants fair pay for skilled labor.

“I completely understand that there are bigger social issues out there that impact more people,” Johnson said. “This is something that’s very close to my heart because I’ve gone through it. There’s this assumption that we’re all making a ton of money, and it’s just not true. People just don’t know. ‘No, man, I’m not going to buy dinner.’ If they’re a teacher or a construction worker or working at McDonald’s, it doesn’t matter, they’re making more money than me.”

“I truly believe we’re very grossly underpaid, and there are not many people willing to stand up and talk about it. The way it has always gone is, ‘shut up, or you’ll piss off the wrong people, and you’re not going to have this opportunity anymore.’ … I’m not saying pay every guy $200 grand a year, but pay him a living wage year-round – something in the $40-60,000 a year range, where I can have a family and not have to worry every second about the bills that we have, or if I can sign my daughter up for gymnastics.

A major league organization with 250 players in its minor league system could give every single one of them a $30,000 annual pay spike for a total of $7.5 million, or roughly the cost of a decent fourth outfielder on the free-agent market.

The Fair Labor Standards Act protects employees who’ve waged labor complaints from retaliatory measures enacted by the employers, but speaking up on behalf of his minor league brethren represents a massive risk for a player like Johnson. Major League organizations can fairly handily find justification to cut loose a 27-year-old minor league lifer coming off a couple of down years, and the prized prospects a team wouldn’t dare let go have far less impetus to demand more pay: Many of them receive six- and seven-figure signing bonuses at the outset of their minor league careers and can reasonably hope to soon earn the $535,000 minimum Major League salary.

“It’s a very bold step that players like Kyle Johnson are taking,” Broshuis told USA TODAY Sports. “I recognize the potential sacrifice here.”

“The first thing that comes to mind is, ‘Are we going to get blackballed because we’re going to be outspoken about this?’ ” Johnson said of his involvement. “That’s something that’s in the back of my mind constantly. I’ve talked to mentors that I’ve had around the game, and people who are coaches in the organization, and basically said, ‘Is this something that’s going to be held against me?’ It’s a funny line, because nobody can really give you a straight answer. Of course they’re going to say, ‘no,’ but it’s terrifying to think that my opportunity in baseball could change because I’m being outspoken about this.”

Johnson and Broshuis both believe minor-league players would benefit from union representation, but unionizing a workforce as large in scale and as disparate in geography, ethnicity and likely future earnings comes with a series of perhaps insurmountable hurdles. Their hopes lie in part in the success of the Professional Hockey Players Association, a 50-year-old union that represents some 1,600 minor league hockey players across the American Hockey League and the East Coast Hockey League, and which has successfully negotiated to guarantee its members reasonable wages, in-season housing, adequate per diems, and revenue sharing, among other benefits.

Like in baseball, NHL parent teams pay the salaries of their minor leaguers. But where hockey players in the AHL — the equivalent of Class AAA — earn a minimum salary of $45,000 U.S., baseball players in their first season at Class AAA make $2,150 a month for the five-month season. AHL players also receive per diems of $72 a day while on the road, nearly triple the standard $25 rate in minor league baseball. Attendance at Class AAA games is slightly higher, on average, than attendance at AHL contests, and the baseball schedules include almost twice as many games. AHL players also earn playoff bonuses, with players on the championship club in 2016-17 set to take home shares of $19,432. Minor league baseball players get compensated for postseason play in the form of pro-rated salaries for whatever additional time they play.

“I think it’s important for baseball players to realize there are a number of players that came before them to make life good for them at the Major League level,” Larry Landon, the PHPA’s executive director, said by phone last week. “If you’re fast-tracked, and you’re there because the end result is the salary, the bonus, and the like, you’ve got to assist the guys who never get there.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with minor league baseball players asking people to share the wealth. They’re chasing a dream, and unfortunately, the stick that’s holding the carrot you’re trying to bite is management, so it’s a long stick. You’re not going to bite the carrot.”

“The biggest challenge is that guys are very reluctant to upset the status quo,” Broshuis said. “My final year of playing, I talked to a number of guys about the possibility of unionizing. It was something we frequently talked about in the clubhouse. But guys were very reluctant to take that step, because they’re trying to reach the big leagues and they’re afraid of the repercussions.”

The league, meanwhile, maintains that federal minimum-wage laws should not apply to minor-league players. In June, 2016, Minor League Baseball — which operates under the MLB umbrella — released a statement in support of a since-defeated proposal to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to ensure it does not protect minor league players, maintaining that the associated increase in player salaries would “jeopardize … the existence of Minor League Baseball itself” even though Major League clubs pay minor leaguers’ salaries. The next day, Major League Baseball followed with a statement which read, in part: “For the overwhelming majority of individuals, being a Minor League Baseball player is not a career but a short-term seasonal apprenticeship.”

“The whole thing about apprenticeship is complete (b.s.),” says Landon. “Show me a plumber, an electrician or a welder that has apprenticed since they were six years old to work a job that might last five or six years. You’re talking about a tradesperson that’s going to work the rest of their life and come out of it when you’re 65 years old. Professional sports have a small window. Where in the world does somebody apprentice to have two years’ worth of shelf life to earn a good salary?”

Johnson loves baseball and he wants to keep playing. He recognizes that playing in Class AAA means he may only be one pulled hamstring away from getting the big-league call and the massive raise associated with it. But the details of the “short-term seasonal apprenticeship” to which he has committed the first five years of his adult life require massive concessions on behalf of a business that’s wildly lucrative only for those among its elite: Johnson’s busy offseason schedule means he often returns home at night after his daughters have gone to sleep, and when he leaves for Florida in a month, he’ll know he may again go six months without seeing his family in person.

“If I knew that, no matter what affiliate I would be at, I had a bed, I had a place to stay where there was heat or air conditioning, depending on the season, if I knew I had a stable place where I could bring my wife and bring my kids and not have to scramble, that would be a huge burden off me,” Johnson said. “Somebody needs to start raising these questions, and start speaking out loud about it, otherwise it’s never going to change. The rest of the world is adapting and growing and getting better at things, and we’re not. It doesn’t make sense.

“Why doesn’t the MLB union also include minor league players? Why don’t we have a voice in that union, or why doesn’t a Major League player — that went through the struggle and grinded for six years and finally made it – why aren’t they a part of this, or advocating for the players? The Major League guys try to take care of us when they can, but they only do so much. I don’t understand why there’s such a disconnect between MLB and MiLB. We all came from the same place. We all work through the same system.”

(Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed the MLBPA among the defendants in the minor leaguers’ lawsuit.)