Players Take Steps to Get Labor Deal

The baseball players’ union has sent a detailed summary of the proposed labor agreement to all players and asked them, providing the terms do not change substantially and the owners ultimately return to the table, to vote authority for ratifying the deal to their executive board.

Donald Fehr, the union’s executive director, refused comment Wednesday, but other union officials said that by giving ratification authority to their executive board, which is comprised of each club’s player representative, the union will be able to continue and complete negotiations past the end of the season, when players scatter and become more difficult to reach.

The move also thwarts any attempt by the owners to wait out the union in the hope that the union would ultimately agree to renegotiate terms that have already been agreed to or pull out of the deal completely, creating a scenario in which the owners would then try to implement their work rules.

The union has suspected from the start of the three-year labor battle that the owners’ ultimate intention is to implement.

Negotiators for the owners and players reached agreement on almost all of the central economic issues during a series of round-the-clock meetings on Aug. 9-10.

Although management negotiator Randy Levine reached those agreements in consultation with the owners’ labor policy committee, negotiations have since come to a standstill while owners conduct an internal debate.

Opposition has centered on two items: the granting of service time to the players for the 75 regular-season days they were on strike and the inclusion of a second, tax-free year in 2001, which would be the sixth and final year of the proposed agreement. The players were given the sixth year in exchange for reducing their share of division playoff receipts.

While some baseball sources contend that acting Commissioner Bud Selig has the 21 votes necessary to ratify, others dispute that.

A source said the real issue is Selig’s ultimate desire to turn control of his Milwaukee Brewers over to his daughter, Wendy Selig-Prieb, and remain as full-time commissioner.

He would need the support of Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and others to do that, but Reinsdorf and some of Selig’s closest friends among the owners oppose the current labor proposal and Selig, according to the source, is reluctant to alienate them by hammering through the labor proposal for fear of losing their support for commissioner.

Selig said that was “sheer nonsense” and unworthy of additional comment. He said it is no secret that some clubs have problems with parts of the proposal. He said he continues to explain the complexities and that there is no deadline for an agreement “we all recognize the industry needs.”

The key terms in the summary sent to the players have been chronicled. Fehr has said they are interrelated and he would resist any attempt by the owners to renegotiate them.

“There are T’s to be crossed and I’s to be dotted, but we would not ask the players to vote if it wasn’t our position that the terms would remain the same fundamentally,” a union official said.