Another Day, No Progress in Talks

Baseball’s collective bargaining talks droned on Tuesday. There was no apparent progress, only more confusion, according to Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Assn.

Fehr said the union spent another futile negotiating session seeking answers to basic questions about the owners’ revenue-sharing proposal.

It has been the contention of the owners’ Player Relations Committee that the proposal is aimed at correcting the revenue disparity between teams in big and small markets, a problem the committee has said will become critical at some unspecified date in the future.

“But they don’t know how to define large and small markets,” Fehr said. “They can’t tell you what the disparity will be, and now they’re saying that the proposal isn’t based on the market issue at all but on a desire to improve labor relations by the formation of a partnership. It’s weird. It’s silly. I’m astonished.”

Fehr said the whole thing is a charade designed to mask the real intent of revenue sharing, which is to lower salaries and eliminate free agency and arbitration.

He said that since the owners can’t justify it through negotiation, they’ll close the spring training camps and attempt to “starve the players into accepting it. If they want a fight, there’s nothing we can do about it. But it’s likely to be a very long one.”

The PRC has said that the camps will not open on Feb. 15 unless the union agrees to the necessity of a change in the compensation system. The owners will meet Friday in Chicago to receive an update on the negotiations.

Charles O’Connor, the committee’s general counsel, said Tuesday that he still believes an eventual agreement on the concept of revenue sharing is possible.

He added that a stabilization of the relationship with the union has always been the central issue of the negotiations, tied to a system that would produce better cost certainty for the owners and an equalization of the playing field for teams in the big and small markets.