Fehr Tired of Being Told ‘No’ : Baseball: Negotiations still hung up over arbitration as lockout enters 11th day.

There was no progress on the critical issues in baseball’s collective bargaining negotiations Saturday, after which the Major League Players Assn. rejected an invitation from Commissioner Fay Vincent to meet in his offices again today.

“You hope that by continuing to talk you might spark something,” said Charles O’Connor, general counsel of the owners’ Player Relations Committee. “The absence of an ongoing discussion usually doesn’t help at this stage.”

Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Assn., said he would be available by phone at his suburban Ryebrook home if O’Connor has any new ideas regarding the impasse on arbitration eligibility.

“I’m more than willing to talk if they can tell me something different will happen,” Fehr said after a four-hour meeting Saturday. “But I have a chance to spend some time with my family and I’m not going to go downtown and be told ‘no’ on two years (as a requirement for arbitration eligibility) again.”

The union wants the requirement for arbitration eligibility rolled back to two years, as it was before the 1985 talks. The owners--now in the 11th day of their spring training lockout--are insisting that it remain at three years.

When will it be discussed again?

The sides are scheduled to meet here Monday morning.

If no agreement is reached--and Fehr said Saturday that the possibility of reaching an agreement in the next two days was doubtful--he would leave Monday night for Phoenix and a meeting with his executive board on Tuesday.

Fehr said he would then meet with other players in various locales.

An extended break in the negotiations would be certain to delay the start of the season, but Fehr said he has an obligation to update the players, and he reiterated that it is the owners who have threatened the season.

“At that point,” he said of Monday’s planned departure, “we would be heading for an indefinite and long lockout, which the clubs have been planning for months and months and months.”

Said O’Connor, rejecting the idea of following Fehr around the country: “If we don’t have an agreement Monday and Don leaves, it would probably be better to retreat into our own camps and try to figure out where we are.”

There were two meetings Saturday.

During the first, the table was cleared of less confrontational issues such as road allowance (last year’s $51.50 per diem will be upgraded according to a cost-of-living scale) and scheduling.

The second meeting featured the ongoing debates on arbitration eligibility and pension contribution.

On both issues, the union is waging what it considers to be a moral war.

In the negotiations of 1985, the union agreed to increase the eligibility requirement for arbitration from two years to three years as a concession to the owners’ claims of financial distress. And for the same reason, the union agreed to take 18% of the national TV contract as its pension and benefits cut rather than the standard 33%.

Now, Fehr said, the union believes it is entitled to restoration of the two-year requirement on arbitration and the 33% pension donation, particularly since the claims of distress proved to be false and were compounded by collusion.

He pointed out that industry revenue has increased $500 million since 1985 but that the amount clubs have paid two-year players since then has increased only an average of $50,000, largely because they were deprived of arbitration.

“Nobody is going to agree to a system that perpetuates that,” Fehr said, alluding to that disparity.

Of the pension issue, Fehr said he has told the PRC that if an agreement could be reached on everything else, the union would knock $100 million off the 33% cut it is entitled to. That would leave a four-year contribution by the owners of $250 million, he said. They have offered $168 million.

O’Connor reiterated Saturday that he believes the 1985 agreements on arbitration and pension were fairly struck and he is as much against turning the clock back as the union is.

Said Fehr:

“The owners should not be in position to take unfair advantage of concessions they secured on an improper basis. If they hold to this position, then no matter what they do in the future, nobody is going to pay attention to them, whether they are making money or not.

“You either can rely on them to act appropriately when their circumstances change or you must assume they will always take advantage of a concession, whether it was warranted or not.”