Baseball Players Asking for Binding Arbitration

The resumption of baseball’s collective bargaining talks Friday night failed to resolve the issue of arbitration eligibility, but Don Fehr, executive director of the Major League Players Assn., suggested a possible solution.

In the wake of a four-hour negotiating session that ended in New York at close to 2 a.m. EST, Fehr said he would be willing to close on all other issues and submit the eligibility question to binding arbitration--with the arbitrator choosing either the three years that the owners want or the two years that the players want.

Fehr said he would recommend that concept to a meeting of his player representatives in New York this afternoon, providing that another negotiating session with the owners’ Player Relations Committee this morning again fails to resolve the arbitration issue.

Charles O’Connor, the PRC’s general counsel, said he would not rule out binding arbitration, but he did not favor it because the offers the PRC has made on other economic issues are based on retaining the current three-year rule.

Both O’Connor and Fehr agreed that virtually all other issues have been resolved. O’Connor said they will take another crack at the arbitration eligibility issue this morning, seeing if there is some way to make more players eligible under the three-year standard by redefining service time.

Friday night’s resumption of talks was part of an attempt to preserve the April 2 opening of the season.

Commissioner Fay Vincent, who returned to his Manhattan office when the negotiators convened there at 9:50 Friday night, delayed an expected announcement that some regular-season games will be canceled or postponed as the union weighed what the PRC described as a deal-making proposal.

The proposal calls for improvements in the owners’ previous pension and minimum salary offers, loosens restrictions governing repeat free agents and roster recalls but does not address arbitration eligibility.

The requirement would remain at three years under the owners’ proposal. The union has indicated there will be no deal unless eligibility is rolled back to two years, as it was before the 1985 agreement.

The proposal, if agreed to over the weekend, is also thought to call for a 162-game schedule that would maintain the April 2 start. As compensation for a two-week training camp, teams would be allowed to carry 30 players for the first month, then 25 after that, an increase from 24 that the union has been seeking.

The proposal was delivered to the union’s New York office in mid-afternoon Friday, Day 30 of the owners’ lockout.

It was studied by union officials and about 10 players for almost four hours. The group then broke for dinner, held a brief news conference and then went to Vincent’s Park Avenue office for the 32nd negotiating session and first in 10 days.

Fehr had been angered Thursday by O’Connor’s public statements, painting the proposal as a “deal maker,” allowing parts of it to leak to the media and saying he had scheduled a Friday afternoon meeting with Fehr to present it.

Fehr responded Thursday by saying no meeting had been scheduled and called it another public-relations charade designed to put pressure on the players.

His tone Friday night, however, was conciliatory, a reflection, perhaps, of what is thought to be growing sentiment among the players that the fight over arbitration eligibility should end now that the regular season is threatened and the rewards in other areas have been improved.

Asked if he thought the player representatives would approve a deal today that did not include an arbitration rollback, Fehr said:

“If the negotiating committee thought that was the sentiment of the executive board, we’d have shaken hands with the PRC tonight, cracked a bottle of champagne and told everyone we had a deal. We’ll go over everything for the board, but I don’t think that’s their sentiment.”

Tim Belcher, the Dodgers’ player representative, said of a proposal that did not include an arbitration rollback: “I’d shoot it down in a minute, but I’m a hard-liner. I don’t know how the rest of the team would feel about the total package until I see it.”

Most observers believe that unless a settlement is reached this weekend, the impasse could wipe out a significant portion of the first week, with none of the canceled games being made up.

Aside from the provisions dealing with arbitration eligibility and the season’s opening, these are the key aspects of the new proposal:

--Raises the minimum salary, $68,000 in 1989, to $100,000, which is $5,000 below the players last proposal.

--Provides an average annual contribution of $55 million to the pension and benefits program, which is $2 million below the players’ last proposal and about $14 million more than the owners’ 1989 contribution.

--Eliminates free-agent repeater restrictions, meaning any player who signs a free-agent contract can become a free agent again when that contract expires instead of having to wait five years.

--Reduces free-agent compensation rules and tightens restrictions to make it more difficult to remove players from the 40-man roster.

--Provides a definite timetable for expansion to 32 teams (16 in each league) by the end of the decade, meaning six new teams and 150 player openings.

The proposal also includes two key items previously agreed to: a guarantee by the owners of treble damages if found guilty of collusion again, and a joint study commission on revenue sharing with each side having the right to reopen negotiations on economic issues after three years of a four-year agreement.