Differences Among the Owners Further Delay a Settlement

Baseball’s proposed labor settlement continued to gather dust Friday.

Management negotiator Randy Levine and union leader Donald Fehr met for 35 minutes, but there were no formal negotiations for a fourth consecutive day as the owners began to resemble a house divided--despite acting Commissioner Bud Selig’s attempts to rally support for the agreement.

Management sources remained optimistic that Selig will get the 21 votes needed to ratify, but opposition to giving the players service time for the period they were on strike--as well as some opposition to a second, tax-free year at the end of a six-year agreement--has created doubt as to when talks on the final issues will resume.

The settlement that seemed at hand after a furious siege of virtual round-the-clock negotiations last Friday and Saturday now seems unlikely, the sources acknowledged, until midweek at the earliest.

The union, Fehr said, will remain patient as owners try to work out their differences, but at some point that patience may yield to a belief that this is a last attempt by the owners to pressure the players into compromising on service time.

“The players expect this to be done,” Fehr said of the proposed settlement. “If it continues to play out, there will be increasing pressure on me to do something.

“At this point I remain persuaded that Randy wants to close a deal.”

Can the owners resolve their differences?

Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, among the hardest hard-liners in opposing service time and a man who has never hidden his contempt of Fehr, was quoted in the Chicago Tribune Friday as saying, “I don’t believe most teams are in favor [of the proposed agreement]” and “I don’t think they can get 15 votes [for it].”

In a conversation with The Times on Friday, Reinsdorf said that he is not among the vanguard trying to stop a deal.

However, he said there are more unresolved issues than service time, confirmed his opposition to the proposal and added that Levine has not returned to the table because he is formulating counter-proposals. If true, that would be news to the union, which believes it has a mutually negotiated deal in place, aside from what seems to be the last and obvious trade-off: the return of service time if the union waives all damage and litigation claims stemming from what was accrued during the strike.

“That would be inconsistent with the process we’ve both engaged in,” Fehr said when asked how he would react if Levine suddenly presented a series of new proposals.

It would also be uncharacteristic of the respected Levine.

Associates said he would react unfavorably to a request by his employers to change proposals with a deal basically in place.

Some chalked all this up to some final tweaking by Reinsdorf in what has been four years of verbal interplay with Fehr, who has long insisted that the White Sox owner is quarterbacking the owners. However, a union source called his Tribune quotes more than tweaking, suggesting they were designed to “make trouble and undermine the deal.”

Said Fehr: “We’ve felt from the beginning that an agreement is clearly up to Jerry. If he wants peace, we’ll have an agreement. If he doesn’t, we won’t. I don’t know if he’s right or wrong [on his vote count], but I think it would be a shame if the owners repudiate their own negotiator.”

The number of clubs opposing service time and the proposed settlement is uncertain, but Reinsdorf’s accounting, which suggests a 14-14 split, is at considerable odds with what has been the view of management sources that only the White Sox, Chicago Cubs and Florida Marlins will ultimately vote against it.

Selig, who generally gets what he wants when counting votes, refused to address Reinsdorf’s comments. “There’s been a lot written about who’s in favor of this and who’s against it, and much of it is inaccurate,” Selig said. “I’ve said I know where the votes are and I do.

“A lot of clubs have serious questions and concerns about the proposal, but that doesn’t mean they would automatically vote against it. We’re trying to be rational and answer the questions.”