Mandatory Drug-Testing Strikes Out

Baseball owners and the players’ union agreed Tuesday that no more mandatory drug-testing clauses will be put in player contracts and that such clauses will not be enforced in contracts already including them while last year’s joint drug agreement is in effect.

A decision to continue the current voluntary testing approach was reached at the management-union contract talks in New York and will be put into writing, probably by today, according to Lee MacPhail, head of the owners’ Player Relations Committee, and Donald Fehr, leader of the Major League Baseball Players Assn.

That clears the way for collective bargaining talks to continue and puts an apparent end to the Dodgers’ recent highly publicized effort to get mandatory drug-testing into several players’ contracts.

MacPhail--who reportedly had not been told in advance about the Dodgers’ attempt--replied with an emphatic yes when asked if the Dodgers had approved Tuesday’s agreement with the union, which is strongly opposed to mandatory testing.

“All 26 clubs have OK’d it,” MacPhail said. “We will finally get back on track with the talks.” He said plans called for talks twice a week, and that he hoped a new basic labor agreement would be signed by the start of the season in April. The previous contract expired Dec. 31.

The Dodgers had no comment of their own. Owner Peter O’Malley, who was reported out of town Tuesday, said last Friday that he had been advised by his lawyers that his attempts to institute mandatory testing were both appropriate and legal, although he had realized there was a substantial risk of encountering union opposition.

O’Malley first retreated Friday, agreeing to take a mandatory-testing clause out of outfielder Mike Marshall’s one-year contract, as well as removing it from the contracts of five other players. At the time, however, O’Malley said he was keeping such a clause in shortstop Bill Russell’s multiyear contract and reserving the right of putting it into other contracts “on a case-by-case basis.”

O’Malley capitulated totally Tuesday, according to MacPhail and Fehr, when part of the agreement reached was that such provisions as those in Russell’s contract would not be enforced.

Fehr said the agreement, reached after a “fairly involved discussion,” contains these three provisions:

--No club will try to put a mandatory drug-testing clause into a player’s contract as long as the joint drug agreement remains in force.

--Any mandatory clause in non-guaranteed contracts, usually of one-year duration, will be removed by the club.

--The joint drug agreement will take precedence over any such clauses in guaranteed multiyear contracts such as Russell’s.

MacPhail was read the provisions and said they represented the owners’ understanding as well.

“To give the joint drug agreement every opportunity to work, we will subjugate all contradictory testing clauses and turn our clubs off on putting additional clauses into new contracts,” he said.

The joint drug agreement, which has no set termination date, allows mandatory testing only of players who are on probation for a previous drug violation. Although the agreement foresees an eventual recommendation by a panel of three neutral doctors on whether organized baseball ought to go to mandatory testing, such a recommendation would be subject to further negotiation between the owners and the union.

A guaranteed contract is one in which the player will be paid no matter what injury he may suffer. It is common in such agreements for the player to be barred from certain activities, such as piloting his own light plane, water skiing, taking drugs or the like. If he violates these provisions, the guarantee is nullified.

Under the agreement reached Tuesday, contracts such as Russell’s may still ban drug use, but the clubs will be able to test for drug use only with the player’s permission.

O’Malley has expressed deep concern about the drug problem on many occasions and unsuccessfully sought a mandatory-testing clause in the joint drug agreement. The union opposed it as a breach of player rights and privacy and also raised questions about the reliability of the tests.