A Dangerous Unilateral Move by Owners

In returning to my computer after a medical absence of several weeks, the prognosis personally is far more optimistic than it is for baseball’s labor negotiations.

Those sporadic talks again threaten the game’s stability and could again end at a potentially disabling impasse.

Of course, I had the opportunity to call on the surgical skill of USC urologist Donald K. Skinner, who thwarted the spread of recently detected cancer by removing my prostate gland.

In the societal microcosm that is baseball, it’s a procedure that Dusty Baker also underwent during the winter and that Joe Torre, Frank Robinson, Bob Watson and Larry Lucchino, among others, have also experienced, proving that attention to RBIs and ERAs should also include focus on PSA, the prostate-specific antigen that can be tracked by regular blood tests and can indicate prostate cancer when found in elevated amounts.

By contrast, there is no specialist and no known cure for the potentially combustible labor ills if owners remain determined to bridge their oft-bemoaned competitive and revenue-related disparities with economic proposals that have no chance of being accepted by a players’ union in business to protect the stars and unwilling to approve any plan that affects the ability of the top-revenue clubs to reward the stars.

Although Shakespeare might note that this is an industry with a whopping $3.5 billion in revenue and call for “a plague o’ both your houses,” it was the owners who set a mischievous tone even before the bargaining agreement expired in November.

They first pulled the negotiating rug from under Paul Beeston, their chief operating officer and a man the union respected, last summer and then unveiled that lamentable contraction scheme that:

1) Quickly removed the World Series glow, 2) inflamed long-smoldering union concerns about trust and communication, 3) delayed labor negotiations almost three months, 4) ran headlong into predictable legal hurdles and 5) proved only to be a smokescreen for the clubs’ comparatively hard-core approach to contract signings, which some agents portrayed as collusion and which is expected to leave many well-known players either out of work or receiving surprisingly low salaries when the season opens in two weeks.

It is no wonder that by the time the owners got serious about labor, any hope of a nonconfrontational settlement was gone. It is no wonder that three days of bargaining sessions last week--the longest continuous talks--went nowhere, and that negotiations are not expected to resume until after the season starts March 31.

Whether either side ultimately has the support and/or stomach for a ninth work stoppage is problematic.

However, there is basically only one conclusion, given that:

1) The owners’ contraction manipulations of the off-season, 2) their tougher approach to contract signings, 3) their claims in congressional hearings of $500 million in losses despite that $3.5 billion in revenue, 4) the give-backs and payroll restraints they are seeking from the union, 5) the basically forced resignation recently of the conciliatory Beeston and 6) the alterations Commissioner Bud Selig has made and continues to make in a negotiating team that represents, in the opinion of one union lawyer, a hawkish extension of his mid-market cabinet of San Diego’s John Moores, Houston’s Drayton McLane, Kansas City’s David Glass and Minnesota’s Carl Pohlad.

The conclusion is that the owners, at some point, are planning to declare a bargaining impasse and unilaterally implement their own work rules.

Said a veteran observer familiar with the thinking on both sides: “Short of a capitulation by the players [on the key issues], which won’t happen, I don’t see any other conclusion than to believe the owners are working toward implementation, putting the onus on the union [whether to strike in protest].

“It’s not going to happen before opening day and may not even happen until the 2003 season, but it’s really the only conclusion.”

If the suggestion is that owners and players could end up operating without a contract in 2002, it wouldn’t be a first. It last happened in 1993, a prelude to the union’s decision to strike in late summer of 1994--what proved to be valid anticipation of a unilateral implementation by the owners.

A federal judge ultimately found the owners guilty of illegal labor practice, throwing out the implementation and ending baseball’s longest work stoppage.

Reached in Milwaukee, Selig said it is “way too premature” to consider the possibility of a new implementation.

“If this was any kind of a charade, I wouldn’t be asking Bob DuPuy and Andy MacPhail to get involved on an everyday basis,” Selig said of his two most recent negotiating appointments. “Their time is too valuable. I wouldn’t have asked them to participate if I didn’t think we have a chance to make a deal. We need to change the system, to get it right this time, and we need to aggressively pursue a deal.”

Strange business.

In the restructuring of the commissioner’s office, Beeston had been lured from his position as the Toronto Blue Jays’ chief executive in 1997 in hope that his relationship with the union would defuse the rhetoric of the past and ultimately produce a bargaining agreement free of rancor.

Sources believe he and baseball lawyer Rob Manfred were quietly homing in on that agreement last summer when Selig, under pressure from owners to put contraction ahead of a new bargaining contract and concerned that their conciliatory chief operating officer might fail to extract blood from the union, canceled Beeston’s participation, making it inevitable that the compromised executive would ultimately resign, which he did earlier this month.

DuPuy, Selig’s counsel since 1989, became COO, joining Manfred and outside counsel Howard Ganz on a negotiating team that Selig augmented this week with MacPhail, the Chicago Cubs’ president and general manager. Selig plans to add another club executive soon, possibly handing out programs in the process.

It may be recalled that during the long labor dispute of 1993-95 the owners went through Richard Ravitch, Chuck O’Connor and a negotiating group of their peers, headed by Colorado’s Jerry McMorris, before Randy Levine--at the time an aide to then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and now president of the New York Yankees--came in to consummate a deal with the union.

Mention to the commissioner that the revolving door, then and now, seems to represent a breakdown in negotiating continuity and he bristles, pointing out that Manfred--baseball’s executive vice president for labor--has been a point man in the talks for 12 years and that DuPuy and MacPhail have been totally briefed.

If Don Fehr, the union’s executive director, privately wonders if the changing faces across the table can be truly aware of the history, can be certain of who said what and when, he has always contended that negotiations are driven by the issues and not the personalities.

To this point in the current sputtering talks, it has been a short drive.

For the owners, there are two key proposals:

A 50% luxury tax on all payroll above $98 million and an increase in the sharing of local revenue from 20% to 50% after ballpark expenses.

The union considers a 50% luxury tax tantamount to a salary cap and has no interest even in responding.

As for revenue sharing, there is a wide difference in distribution concepts as well as percentage.

In this, the union appears disingenuous by claiming its split method of distribution would send more money to the low-revenue teams than the owners’ straight plan. In reality, the union opposes the straight method because it drains more money from the large-revenue clubs and affects their ability to sign the star players.

There are other chips on the table, including the owners’ quest for major and implausible give-backs by the union in the area of salary arbitration, but nothing is more important to the clubs than increased revenue sharing and meaningful payroll restraint.

Can they achieve it? Can all those clubs with huge debts on new ballparks be held in line if it comes to an impasse and possible shutdown?

The owners are 0-8 in previous negotiations, having always come out unified and smoking, only to capitulate to their individual agendas.

Now, Selig, whose contract was recently extended, seems to have the tenure and clout to control any opposition, of which there is a silent minority--no owner willing to risk a $1-million fine for talking publicly about the labor situation or critically of Selig.

In addition, Selig’s recent announcement that he will be enforcing the 60-40 rule, under which clubs must maintain a ratio of 60% assets to 40% liabilities or face fines, the loss of national TV payments or other sanctions, has compounded the uneasy and disconcerting atmosphere of the off-season, underscoring the impression that the owners are prepared to turn the screws wherever and whenever they can.

The union, whose contraction grievance continues to be heard by arbitrator Shyam Das, unsuccessfully challenged the 60-40 rule with an arbitration grievance in 1985 but may do so again, contending that since player contracts have been factored into Selig’s redefinition of liabilities, the rule should be bargained collectively.

Amid it all, the familiar sniping has begun:

* Management has spread a rumor that players are out to get Selig and intend to boycott the July All-Star game in Selig’s new Milwaukee ballpark, an absurd bit of misinformation since the players, whose pension plan is funded partially by All-Star proceeds, would be hurting only their own image and retirement account.

* In response to comments by Mike Piazza in the New York Daily News in late February that clubs used creative accounting methods (no news there) and were divided on the issue of increased revenue sharing (Piazza also criticized some owners for pocketing their revenue-sharing grants instead of using them to improve their teams), Manfred, the clubs’ lawyer, sent a memo with the Piazza comments attached to each owner, accusing Fehr of misinforming the players regarding the negotiations.

Said Fehr, in response: “We don’t have any gag rules. Players say whatever they want and get to attend meetings. Owners apparently can’t say what they want, can’t come to meetings and can’t talk to one another. It’s bizarre. I mean, the notion that you would muzzle free speech is foreign to us, but apparently not to them. The notion that you would not want to have a lot of communication between the union and management is foreign to us, but apparently not to them. And the notion that owners should somehow not be permitted to talk to other owners is--I don’t even know what to make of that.”

Oh, doctor! Do I have enough Vicodin left?