Miller in Unison With Players

He is 85, in the 20th summer of retirement, and his voice and opinions in support of the union he built into one of the country’s most powerful remain as firm as ever, as rigidly insistent as at any time in his 16 years as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn.

Reached at his Manhattan apartment, Marvin Miller said that should the sport experience a ninth work stoppage, an interruption in the 2002 season or postseason, it will be the result again of management demands, an attempt by owners to have the union join them in cutting future salary growth.

Miller called it a “replay of everything I’ve seen” in baseball’s tumultuous labor history and “so atypical” again of labor disputes in other industries--disputes in which it is usually the union making demands--that “it’s hard to describe and even harder to grasp.”

“For 30 years now, ever since the ’72 pension fight, every dispute that has led to a stoppage has been over issues raised by management,” Miller said.

“It’s like nothing we’ve seen [in any other industry].”

Whether the owners alone were responsible for all eight work stoppages is debatable. On that, Miller may be guilty of revisionist history.

There is one certainty: Although the union would be happy if the current system continued, it is the owners’ quest for increased revenue sharing and a tax on high payrolls that has driven the current bargaining negotiations--as intermittent and nonproductive as they are--to the brink of a decision by the union on whether to set a strike date and, if so, whether it should be in August, September or beyond.

Union officials and player representatives from each of the 30 teams will meet in Chicago on Monday to discuss the possibilities, but the latest indication is that the players will delay setting a date so as not to overshadow Tuesday’s All-Star game.

Whether it happens Monday or later, the setting of a strike date might accelerate negotiations and provide the union with its only option if owners declare an impasse and unilaterally implement new work rules.

But it might also leave fans convinced again that greedy players would be responsible for any work stoppage.

“No other conclusion is possible,” Miller said when asked if he felt it was the owners’ intention from the start to implement. “And if the union sets a strike date, we’re going to get the usual, ‘Oh boy, the union wants more; what do they want now?’

“Nobody will interpret it as the only defensive move the union can make.

“I mean, the hope [in setting a date] is that the losses involved in a long strike would make the owners think twice about the demands they are making.”

What would Miller, who headed the union from 1966 until 1982 after 16 years with the United Steelworkers of America, recommend?

“I’m really not close enough to the situation,” he said, “but my feeling is that if the union and players feel there’s no possibility of a reasonable settlement, I think an [August] strike date would make more sense than a later one.

“If your object is to inflict some pain in the hope that you bring [negotiating] reality to the front again, I think you do that earlier than later [when there’s still hope of saving the postseason].

“On the other hand, if the union feels, for whatever reasons, this is all a lot of foreplay and a settlement is possible, that’s different.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Miller:

* Suggested that the NFL, NBA and NHL unions had basically sold out to management by agreeing in their current labor contracts to “join what amounts to a conspiracy with the employer to cut its members’ future salaries”;

* Said he is convinced, despite ownership laments about competitive and revenue disparity, that this is a “golden age in baseball”;

* Voiced puzzlement at how big-market clubs continue to back bargaining proposals that will cost them significant revenue;

* Expressed support of drug testing where there is probable cause but said he opposed random testing for steroids or other substances because it invades privacy, could be used for indiscriminate abuse by management and “there is a little too much confidence in test results. The number of false positives is alarming.”

* Accused Commissioner Bud Selig of obvious conflicts of interest, saying it goes beyond the most obvious of those conflicts--his role as commissioner and club owner. Selig has put his Milwaukee Brewers in a blind trust, but Miller said that doesn’t change the facts or perspective.

As owner of a “so-called have not” in baseball’s revenue lexicon, Miller said Selig is “using his position as commissioner to push for a solution to baseball’s so-called problems” that will directly benefit his small-market team, which is a “textbook definition of a conflict of interest.”

“And my puzzlement,” Miller added, “is not so much about him but how the so-called ‘have’ clubs continue to be quiet and go along with this. A ‘have’ club has to be saying, ‘Well, let’s see now. We have to be quiet under penalty of a major fine and we have to go along with this commissioner’s policies because, even though it may cause a stoppage and severe loss of revenue to us, we have to agree to support the policies because it will cost us even more money each year through [the increase in] revenue sharing and the tax on payrolls.’ I’ve heard of win-win situations, but they’re in a lose-lose situation, and still they remain quiet.”

While Selig insists that management proposals would help the entire industry, not just the small-market teams, the hardened Miller comes from a lifetime of dealing with big business.

He successfully led the baseball union out of a wilderness that was decades of player abuse and restraint by the owners, who now believe the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

The current negotiations, however, can’t be painted in either black or white.

If the owners, citing operating losses of $500 million last year and debt of more than $3 billion, are prepared to risk another work stoppage and court fight through unilateral implementation of new work rules, the union’s only option is to set a strike date.

At the same time, the union’s most recent negotiating stance has been basically to avoid negotiating, leaving management proposals unanswered.

The union may be determined to maintain the current system, avoiding a cap-like tax on payrolls and a revenue-sharing plan that would significantly increase the $187 million that big-market clubs are doling to their weaker brethren this year, but unless the union offers meaningful proposals--counter or otherwise--it may be enhancing the owners’ future claim of a legal impasse.

Miller said he chats with union successor Don Fehr occasionally but is not privy to negotiation details.

Nor, he said, does he have baseball’s internal financial figures “and I don’t trust them when they’re presented.”

But, citing record revenue of $3.5 billion, upward trends in all the components making up that revenue (attendance is down 5% but still expected to top 70 million) and--for the most part--spiraling franchise values, the “usual measurements of any industry,” Miller said there is no evidence baseball is experiencing anything less than a “golden age.”

And, he added, “Selig and the owners don’t even seem to realize it. All they do is talk down the business and the players. I call it negative promotion.”

Miller also said that despite all of the management rhetoric about financial instability and competitive imbalance, owners are basically asking the union to join them in restraining a free market and cutting future payroll, and any union short of a “company union, which is what the football, basketball and hockey unions are now,” should never be in that position.

“By that I mean, a) there is no evidence it is needed and never has been, and b) the payrolls are as high as they are substantially because the owners unilaterally make the decision to sign players at such figures,” Miller said, pointing out that the union is concert only to the minimum salary and, to an extent, salaries determined in arbitration.

“Given those facts,” he continued, “it makes it virtually impossible for the union to be party to a concerted attempt to cut salaries lower than they would be if there was no union at all.

“I mean, [because of antitrust restrictions] it wouldn’t be possible for the owners to do any of the things they are proposing, such as pooling revenue and putting a tax on payrolls, if there wasn’t a union.

“So many people don’t seem to understand the terrible position the union is in.”

Perhaps, but a union whose constituency has an average salary of $2.4 million always seems to do pretty well.

In fact, it can be said that the union is 8-0 against the usually divided owners, coming out of previous stoppages.

It is also clear that the winning pitcher in many of the early confrontations, even at 85, hasn’t changed his delivery.*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The Miller File

Born: April 14, 1917 in Bronx, New York.

Labor background: Three years at the National War Labor Relations Board, then worked for the Machinist Union and the United Auto Workers before working his way through the ranks in 16 years with the United Steelworkers, to become that union’s leading economist and negotiator.

Career in baseball: Elected head of the Major League Baseball Players Assn. in 1966, serving in that capacity for 16 years.

Accomplishments: A pioneer in the unionization of professional athletes, he made gains at the bargaining table and educated players who previously had accepted the owners’ pronouncements on the economics of the sport. Supported challenges to the reserve clause in 1975 that led to the era of free agency. Although unpopular with the owners, and incurring the wrath of fans during two player strikes, he earned respect for the fledgling union, as well as better salaries, a much-improved pension plan and better working conditions. The average salary increased during his tenure from $19,000 to $240,000.

Work stoppages: Union’s first strike, lasting 13 days at the beginning of the 1972 season, occurred under his leadership, as did the 50-day strike midway through the 1981 season.

Post-baseball: Served for many years as an advisor to the union. Recounted his experiences in baseball in his 1991 book “A Whole Different Ball Game: The Sport and Business of Baseball.”