Baseball Players’ Proposal Not Expected to Have Much Impact

The proposal that the baseball players’ union will present to the owners today seems more likely to produce a crash course in labor law than a bargaining settlement.

Lacking the rigid cost controls that the owners demand and designed more to challenge the apparent lip service the owners have given to the concept of a partnership with the players, it seems unlikely the proposal can forestall the owners’ plan to declare an impasse and unilaterally implement their salary-cap proposal on Thursday in Chicago.

“It’s definitely crunch time, and that might be helpful to get both sides moving--at least hopefully,” said Dick Conn, an associate of special mediator William J. Usery.

Usery got the owners to delay implementation on Dec. 5 to give the union time to develop the proposal it delivered to the mediator Friday night, but he lacks binding authority and, despite his recent plea that implementation would be damaging to the bargaining and mediating process, only a show of progress in this final attempt to reach a negotiated settlement will keep the owners from convening in Chicago.

Is there any flexibility in the implementation timetable?

“Not much, if any,” Stan Kasten, president of the Atlanta Braves and a member of the owners’ negotiating team, said Friday. “But show me a reason and then I’ll be able to answer that.”

The union hopes to provide that reason today, when its proposal reaches the owners.

“I’ve seen three different reports,” Kasten said, referring to the contents of the proposal. “One made me absolutely furious, one made me absolutely ebullient and one left me totally confused, which is probably the most accurate.”

The union proposal, sources have said, has no cap or ceiling. It imposes a “tax” of about 5.3% on the highest-revenue teams, creating a pool of $60 million to $70 million for the lower-revenue teams. That total is comparable to the revenue stream in the owners’ salary-cap proposal, but the 5.3% rate may not provide the spending discouragement that the owners’ high-rate tax proposal does.

The union proposal also creates a $25-million to $35-million pool from licensing revenue that the owners would match from expansion fees, the money to be used in joint marketing and capital ventures. It also calls for the players to share in major industry decisions.

Said union leader Donald Fehr: “The owners have talked about expanding the game together, about forming new partnerships, but we’ve never heard anything more from them on those subjects except general concepts. This proposal requires commitments from the clubs and players to work together in the long-term interest of the game.”

Is that enough?

“We want to have a partnership,” Kasten said. “At the same time, our goals haven’t changed because the economic problems haven’t changed. Salary control is very important.”

Said acting Commissioner Bud Selig from Milwaukee: “We need to forge a partnership, no question about it. We need to move beyond the acrimony so that we can grow revenue to the benefit of everyone, but we can’t do it until we solve our economic problems in a meaningful way, which is why we need an entire new system that will allow that growth. The NBA and NFL cleared a lot of that up (by going to salary caps).”

The message seems clear: Cost control comes first. If the owners don’t get it here, they will implement the cap Thursday in Chicago, reacting to a Dec. 20 deadline for tendering 1995 contracts. Selig reiterated that the clubs have reached a point “where they have to know what system is in place so that they can set their rosters.”

Nevertheless, the chairman of his negotiating committee, Chief Executive Officer John Harrington of the Boston Red Sox, said he is hopeful there will be reason to delay implementation again, that Dec. 20 is not etched in stone.

It’s all part of what is being called a doomsday scenario in which the union would react to implementation with a series of legal challenges through the National Labor Relations Board and federal court in Philadelphia, where the owners’ antitrust exemption has been significantly narrowed by a previous ruling.

The union would then resume the strike next spring when the owners plan to open the camps with replacement players.

In time, cost control could come at a heavy price, with the owners fined considerably more than their $280-million collusion assessment.

“I make the assumption that if the owners are interested in trying to find a deal, these talks will continue until we make one,” Fehr said. “If they’re not, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”