NLRB Expected to Rule Against Owners : Baseball: With players’ charge of unfair labor practices upheld today, old labor agreement would be reinstated. Strike could end, but lockout might follow.

The general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board is expected to announce today that he is issuing a complaint against baseball’s owners for unfair labor practice and will seek an injunction that would compel the owners to reinstate the terms and conditions of the old labor agreement with the players.

Union leader Donald Fehr reiterated that if the NLRB is successful in securing an injunction, he would recommend to the players that they end the seven-month strike and return to work.

“We would have to look at the terms (of the injunction), but my position on that hasn’t changed,” Fehr said.

Fred Feinstein, the NLRB’s general counsel, summoned representatives of the owners and players to his Washington office for separate meetings today, prompting postponement of labor talks that were scheduled to resume in Florida.

Management counsel Chuck O’Connor, who already had arrived in Florida to meet with the owners’ negotiating team in an attempt to formulate a best, and perhaps last, offer to the players in compliance with special mediator William J. Usery’s request, returned to Washington for the meeting with Feinstein and said the negotiations have been delayed indefinitely.

“Until we know what the NLRB decision is, it’s impossible to put together a best offer,” O’Connor said. “Too much depends on what rules are in place.”

Usery said he would stay in contact with the parties and that a determination would be made on resuming negotiations when the situation has been clarified.

Fehr said he saw no reason the talks couldn’t resume on Wednesday but was told by management representatives that they would need time to assess the NLRB decision.

“No matter what happens tomorrow, they need to be rescheduled because we need to reach an agreement,” Fehr said, refusing to speculate on how the anticipated decision could provide leverage for the players or affect the talks.

Jerry McMorris, owner of the Colorado Rockies and lead management negotiator, said: “I don’t know if this changes a whole lot, but it definitely slows everything down. In the end, we still have to reach an agreement.”

Today’s anticipated decision by the NLRB stems basically from the owners’ decision to declare an impasse in the negotiations and implement their salary-cap system on Dec. 23. The union charged the owners with unfair labor practice and an illegal impasse.

The NLRB ultimately concurred but allowed the owners to avoid sanctions if they withdrew the cap and restored the conditions of the previous labor agreement, which they did on Feb. 3.

However, the owners’ view of the status quo differed from the players’, and three days later the owners unilaterally eliminated salary arbitration and installed what was tantamount to a signing freeze by making their Player Relations Committee the sole bargaining agent for the 28 clubs.

The union considered that a violation of the owners’ Feb. 3 plea-bargain agreement with the NLRB and filed new charges, leading to today’s decision.

Before pursuing an injunction, Feinstein must receive approval from his five-member board. If the board gives him that approval as expected, owners and players could be in U.S. District Court in Manhattan within two weeks. The season is scheduled to open with replacement players on April 2 but could be delayed, management sources said, until April 10.

The owners, who have shown no interest in playing even one more season under the terms of the previous labor agreement, can appeal an injunction and could respond to the players’ willingness to end the strike, if an injunction is issued, by ordering a lockout.

However, a lockout would be accompanied by major financial and legal risks. If an administrative law judge upheld the unfair labor practice charge, the owners would be liable for back pay from the time the strike started Aug. 12, plus interest.

Of a lockout possibility, John Harrington, chief executive officer of the Boston Red Sox, said: “It depends on the options open to us at the time. There are some scenarios where there wouldn’t be a lockout and a whole lot of scenarios where there would be.”

A high-ranking management official said there has been no decision on a lockout.

“That’s getting ahead of ourselves,” he said. “I can only tell you that we’ve talked to a whole raft of lawyers and are reasonably optimistic that we would prevail on all of this in court.”

* HALL OF FAMER DIES

Leon Day, a star pitcher in the Negro Leagues who was elected by the Veterans Committee to the Hall of Fame last week, died at 78. C5