Owners’ Proposal Brings Little Enthusiasm : Baseball: Fehr says counterproposal will be offered with hopes there is room for negotiation.

With only five days left until the baseball season is scheduled to open with replacement players, union leader Donald Fehr displayed little public enthusiasm Tuesday for the owners’ latest bargaining proposal.

However, he said the players will offer a counter - proposal and hoped there was room for negotiation within the framework of management ‘ s offer.

“I assume there’s room for negotiation,” he said. “If there isn’t, we’re in trouble.”

Acting Commissioner Bud Selig, in detailing the owners’ proposal Monday night, had said it was as far as the owners could go, but a union source said Selig and Fehr discussed the likelihood of continuing give and take during a 90-minute lunch at a Manhattan hotel Tuesday.

Selig and his negotiating associates, Jerry McMorris of the Colorado Rockies and John Harrington of the Boston Red Sox, then left New York for their respective homes to await the union’s response later this week.

In a later news conference, Fehr said the owners’ proposal “represented some movement” but that “it would be incorrect of me to suggest it was substantial.”

Although the proposal permits the union to retain salary arbitration and free agency in their current forms, Fehr said it would result in “the players being paid less than they are worth.”

The killer, he said, continues to be the 50% payroll tax. Even though the owners have raised the threshold at which it would kick in from $40.7 million to $44 million, Fehr said, “in our view a 50% tax is very close to a salary cap, if, in effect, it’s not.”

He also said the union continues to believe that with expansion income, a new revenue-sharing format and eventual growth of the national TV package, the clubs should survive their alleged financial problems and be able to phase out the tax plan after three years of a five- or six-year agreement.

The union refers to that phase-out as a sunset provision, but it is not included in the owners’ proposal and could become a critical issue.

“We definitely don’t want the tax to go on forever,” said Pittsburgh shortstop Jay Bell, a member of the union’s negotiating committee.

For now, however, the rate and threshold are the main hurdles.

The last union proposal called for a 25% tax on all payrolls of more than $54.1 million. Only one club, based on 1994 projections, would have been taxed.

How far the union will go in a counter-proposal wasn’t clear but sources close to the negotiations believe that a 35% tax on payrolls higher than $46 million or $47 million might produce an agreement.

However, with time running out, the union is not expected to make a counter-proposal until Thursday at the earliest.

Union attorney Lauren Rich and management attorney Rob Manfred are scheduled to hold a technical meeting on the owners’ proposal today, but the union is otherwise tied up in player meetings. Fehr met with his negotiating committee Tuesday night and will meet with his full executive board today.

The board is expected to pass a resolution saying the players will end the strike if the National Labor Relations Board obtains an injunction forcing owners to reinstate terms of the expired bargaining agreement. U.S. District Judge Sonia Sotomayor will conduct a hearing on that request Friday, but might not rule immediately.

Manfred said Tuesday “it’s a pretty good bet” the clubs will appeal if she grants the injunction. The clubs might also respond to the players’ attempt to end the strike without a settlement by voting on a lockout, requiring approval of 21 of the 28 clubs.

Meanwhile, a source close to the union said that despite Fehr’s public stance on the owners’ proposal “there are some interesting things in it that deserve serious study and which will receive serious study. There’s no particular reason to be optimistic, but it’s also not as pessimistic as Don portrays it.”