Fehr Says Legal Action Is Option for Players : Baseball: Union director questions legality of possible spring-training lockout by owners.

The Major League Players Assn. is considering legal action if the owners enforce a lockout of spring training camps, Don Fehr, the union’s executive director, said Wednesday.

“Anytime you talk about a lockout you have to look at the causes of that lockout, and we have serious questions and doubts about the legality of this lockout,” Fehr said from New York after a fruitless resumption of collective bargaining talks.

“Hopefully, there won’t be one, but I’m assuming there will be, and I’ve assumed there will be since they (the owners) started beating the drums for a lockout more than a year ago.”

The owners are scheduled to meet in Chicago Feb. 9 to decide whether to allow camps to open Feb. 15 or to stage a lockout because of the union’s refusal to accept a revenue-sharing proposal that would radically change baseball’s economic system.

Fehr refused to identify the course a legal challenge would take, but a member of his staff said it could be directed at the National Labor Relations Board, the courts or baseball’s own arbitration system.

“Perhaps all three,” he said. “We’re assuming that the owners would take a very smug and aggressive position in regard to a lockout, and we would explore every avenue we can to make life miserable for them.”

The obvious goal would be to get the camps reopened, suggesting, perhaps, a court injunction.

As to the doubts the union harbors regarding the legality of a lockout, Fehr declined to list them.

“I’m not going to draw them (the owners) a road map,” he said. “I’m not going to make it easier for them.”

It can be speculated, however, that a union challenge would center on the absence of good faith bargaining, that the union would claim the lockout was premeditated and not the result of an impasse reached through legitimate negotiations.

The union would certainly cite the fact that since December of 1988 the clubs have refused to give guaranteed contracts without the inclusion of a lockout clause dealing with 1990 salary, that the clubs have been talking about a Feb. 15 lockout for more than a year and that, since the start of the current talks, the union has been unable to initiate meaningful negotiations on player proposals because of the clubs’ preoccupation with revenue sharing.

Fehr and his colleagues met with representatives of the owners’ Player Relations Committee for the 14th time Wednesday. The agenda, for the first time, called for a serious presentation of union proposals.

Among them:

--Increasing the minimum salary from $68,000 to between $100,000 and $125,000.

--Lowering the requirement for salary arbitration from three years of major league service to two.

--Increasing roster size from 24 players to 25.

--Agreement by the owners that they will pay treble damages if found guilty again of collusion.

Fehr said the union made no headway.

“The feeling I have is that nothing the players say matters at all,” he said.

“They’re polite. They listen. And that’s it,” he said of the PRC team.

“We finally got a chance to present our proposals today and their only reaction was that they would talk about them once we agree to revenue sharing.”

Fehr has not yet rejected revenue sharing, but it is clear the union will not accept a system that eliminates arbitration, restricts free agency and includes a pay-for-performance scale by which players with zero to six years of major league service would not be eligible for guaranteed or multiyear contracts.

In addition, Fehr reiterated, the PRC has yet to prove that there is a need for a radical change in the compensation system.

“They don’t have a basis for it,” he said. “We’re still looking for the rationale.

“They say that there’ll be critical revenue disparities between the big and small markets in several years, but what kind of disparities and when?”

The feared imbalance has not been evident during this winter of soaring salaries.

Teams in many of the smaller markets, such as Seattle, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minnesota, Cincinnati and the Bay Area, have been among the most active.

Fehr said he was frustrated by the lack of progress but not surprised.

“I can’t be surprised when you consider how long they’ve been beating that drum (for a lockout),” he said.

Charles O’Connor, the PRC’s general counsel, did not return calls Wednesday. There has been speculation that the owners--with nothing really to be gained by a spring training lockout--will eventually lift the Feb. 15 deadline, though O’Connor has continued to say that the union must agree to the concept of revenue sharing by then or a lockout will be ordered.

O’Connor is expected to discuss the revenue sharing concept when he conducts a news briefing aimed at correcting media inaccuracies this morning.

“I presume this is public justification for a lockout No. 1,” Fehr said. “I presume this was orchestrated by his public relations people.”

Presume this as well: Fehr will have an afternoon briefing in response.