Strike Talks Take a Turn for the Better : Labor: Frustration and anger turn into hope for a settlement as players’ union accepts owners’ revenue-sharing plan and expresses willingness to be more flexible on luxury tax idea.

Only 24 hours after a frustrated Bud Selig, the acting commissioner, withdrew from baseball’s labor talks and an angry Jerry McMorris threatened to, the protracted process seemed to regain a degree of momentum on Friday.

Resuming talks that appeared on the verge of collapse Thursday, union negotiators made a new series of suggestions in which they accepted the owners’ revenue-sharing plan and expressed flexibility regarding the payroll level at which a luxury tax would be triggered.

The potentially significant moves served to keep the sides at the table for more than 10 hours Friday and seemed to prompt the first legitimate give-and-take bargaining since the players went on strike Aug. 12.

“I don’t want to suggest the gulf has been bridged, but I think we should be considered to have made a big step forward,” said union leader Donald Fehr.

McMorris, the owner of the Colorado Rockies who was persuaded to stay involved by Selig after suggesting it might be time to turn the negotiating reins over to the more militant Jerry Reinsdorf and union-busting attorney Robert Ballow, said the negotiations took a positive turn and would resume this morning.

“I think we’ve cleared the air on some things and can move forward,” he said in reference to the union’s proposal.

“I had hoped to get to where we are now on Wednesday night, but at least the wheels are back on the process.”

Whether a settlement can be achieved in time for the season to open with regular players instead of replacements--both sides have tabbed Monday as a tentative deadline--remains uncertain, but a management source referred to the prospects of a settlement in general and said:

“On a scale of 10, I’d say we’re now at 6 1/2.”

In addition to a new position on revenue sharing and payroll threshold, the union maintained its previous stances on arbitration and free agency, specifically: unrestricted free agency for players with four or more years of major league service and arbitration for three-year players and the top 17% of two-year players, based on service time.

Management wants to eliminate arbitration entirely and give right-of-first-refusal free agency to four- and five-year players, but both sides are believed flexible on the arbitration and free agency issues, depending on the pivotal tax.

Before the Feb. 7 visit to the White House, the union had proposed to special mediator William J. Usery a 25% tax on all payroll over 145% of the major league average. The 145% threshold would have been $59 million in 1994, which no club reached, meaning none would have been taxed.

Fehr, who hoped to establish new comfort and chemistry by turning over Friday’s negotiating to aides Lauren Rich and Michael Weiner and players Jay Bell, Paul Molitor and Terry Steinbach, said the union now is suggesting a 25% tax at a level to be negotiated.

The question is, can the union and owners--who hope the tax might work in the manner of a salary cap--compromise at that 25% rate and a threshold level of about 125% considering the last owners’ proposal called for a 75% tax on payroll between $35 million and $40 million and a 100% tax on payroll above that. Nineteen clubs would have been taxed if the plan had been implemented in 1994, representing, in the union’s view, a significant deterrent to spending.

The new union proposal also calls for the tax to be eliminated after three years because, Fehr said, the clubs should have been able to rework their alleged financial problems in that time--aided by an expansion windfall in ’98 and a five-year revenue-sharing plan that ultimately will transfer about $58 million from big- to small-revenue clubs.

The union has been reluctant to approve the formula--management believed the union used revenue sharing to stall meaningful talks--because it felt the transfer of revenue from the big clubs, which generally establish the market, would be a drag on salaries in itself and inhibit revenue growth by the small markets, since they would basically be on welfare.

Thus, Fehr called the acceptance of a revenue-sharing plan that takes money directly from the big markets rather than establishing new formulas for sharing gate receipts and local broadcasting revenue “no small step.”

McMorris called it “positive but not earth shaking.”

“The amount of money involved ($58 million) is only 3% of the gross revenue,” he said. “I don’t think that drag coefficient is very extensive, but I’m glad to have it behind us. It had occupied the union’s approach for a very long time.”