Baseball’s Talks Hit Bump in Road

Baseball’s peace talks, regenerated Thursday in a burst of optimism, seemed to hit a stumbling point again Friday on the issue of arbitration eligibility.

In a four-hour collective bargaining meeting on Day 9 of the owners’ spring training lockout, management’s Player Relations Committee continued to resist attempts by the players’ association to reduce the eligibility requirement for arbitration from three years to two.

“It’s an absolute, proverbial stonewall,” said Don Fehr, the union’s executive director. “And there’s no reason to think we can likely find a way to reach an agreement without some movement on the clubs’ side.”

Fehr added that no amount of sweetening by the clubs in other areas could tempt the union to accept three years, but there is some belief that that’s only rhetoric, that the union is unwilling to compromise its biggest bargaining chip before knowing to what extent the pension plan and minimum salary are to be sweetened, and if the rosters are to be expanded from 24 to 25 players.

On Thursday, the PRC removed the proposal that had outraged the union 24 hours earlier and, for the first time, made unrestricted offers on minimum salary and pension.

On Friday, the union responded to that proposal and acknowledged progress on the complex subject of free-agent repeater rights but, said Fehr, “very large chasms remain on the central issues.”

The sides will meet twice today, and are likely to continue meeting through Monday. Fehr said he will leave for an executive board meeting in Phoenix Tuesday.

If there is no agreement by then, he said, it is likely that the season will have to be delayed.

He again railed at the lockout in that regard, saying it has also complicated the negotiating process if for no other reason than union officials have to spend several hours on the phone each day, updating the players.

And the longer it goes on, Fehr added, there is less likelihood that the players will agree to the proposal of Commissioner Fay Vincent and the PRC that a four-year bargaining agreement provide each side with the opportunity to reopen negotiations after two years.

Said Fehr: “The players would be willing, if the agreement is right, to consider a reopening in two years and a study commission (on revenue sharing), but if there’s a long shutdown now and we’ve got to fight the battle now, there will be no inclination to even suggest giving the clubs that opportunity again in two years.”

Charles O’Connor, the PRC’s general counsel, reiterated Friday that the lockout will not be lifted, that it was implemented to prevent the pressures and economic repercussions of a midseason stoppage by the players.

In the meantime, the talks droned on, Friday’s session being the 28th.

The union countered the PRC’s $85,000 minimum salary proposal of Thursday with a proposal of $112,500 and said it would make a precise proposal today in response to the PRC’s unsatisfactory pension offer that stretched from $42.3 million to $47.3 million over the four years.

On the critical issue of arbitration eligibility, the union is now asking the PRC to take a hard look at the statistical contributions of two-year players and consider the fact that their average salary, despite the industry’s prosperity, has increased less than $10,000 since 1984.

In the labor negotiations of 1985, as a concession to the owners’ claims of financial distress, the union agreed to increase the arbitration requirement from two to three years.

Gene Orza, the union’s associate general counsel, said Friday that those claims proved to be a “profound larceny” in that the clubs’ estimate of their losses over the next four years--a period in which all clubs prospered--was $100 million off and compounded by three years of collusion.

Of the current attempt to regain the year that was sacrificed in ‘85, Orza said that since the PRC has failed to heed the union’s appeal to their sense of fairness, “we’ve now asked them to focus on the significant contributions of two-year players” such as Ellis Burks of the Boston Red Sox and Bobby Thigpen of the Chicago White Sox.

O’Connor said the PRC is aware of those contributions but considers the ’85 agreement to be a “bargain fairly struck” and will not give up the three-year requirement.

“The clubs consider it an important economic issue,” he said.