Owners Disgusted By Players’ Proposal
Baseball’s labor talks continued Saturday in Washington with the striking major league players making a proposal that they said represented a step toward a compromise - but that apparently infuriated representatives of the team owners, who maintained the step was so tiny, it was practically non-existent.
Ownership sources claimed that special mediator W.J. Usery also was upset with the players’ proposal, and Boston Red Sox general partner John Harrington - the chairman of management’s bargaining committee - said the owners had taken a “preliminary look” at the offer and had concluded that “we don’t see any meaningful movement in this thing. It was a little disappointing. The level of movement just was not there at all.”
One major league owner called the union’s offer “ridiculous” and said it may have ended serious negotiations for this weekend.
Meanwhile, sources said the players will lift their signings freeze early this week. The owners on Friday withdrew the salary cap system they’d implemented in December; the action was part of an agreement with the National Labor Relations Board under which the agency will not issue a complaint against the owners for unfair labor practices. The players will be permitted to begin signing contracts under the terms of the game’s previous economic system.
The Players Association, responding to the taxation proposal presented by the owners on Wednesday, Saturday offered to eliminate the salary arbitration system under certain conditions and addressed the core economic issue of the dispute with a plan that would tax teams’ player payrolls at a top rate of 25 percent. The two sides canceled their original plans to resume meeting late Saturday night and remained remarkably far from a deal - the owners’ tax plan topped out at 100 percent, and at a much lower payroll level than the players proposed - with President Clinton’s Monday deadline for significant progress in talks looming.
Clinton and the principals were separated by only a few floors at the Mayflower Hotel for a while Saturday night. The president accompanied first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to a Wellesley College reunion, but did not pay a visit to the baseball negotiators. Usery is scheduled to brief Clinton administration officials this afternoon on the talks, and the president has said that he may ask Usery to recommend terms of a settlement Monday if there’s not sufficient movement toward an agreement.
“Bill Usery has to report to the president no later than Monday, and he would very much like to report it’s resolved,” union chief Donald Fehr said. “This (proposal) was an attempt to move in that direction.”
The union proposed a three-tiered tax plan. Fifteen of the 28 major league teams - the 15 clubs that were designated as “contributors” under the revenue-sharing plan the owners ratified 13 months ago in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. - would be assessed payroll taxes. They’d be taxed at a rate of 5 percent for all money devoted to player compensation above a threshold of 50 percent of the average major league payroll. The tax rate would increase to 15 percent above a threshold of 130 percent of the average payroll, and to 25 percent above 160 percent of the average payroll.
The players’ previous proposal, on Dec. 22, called for a 5 percent tax beginning at 20 percent of the average payroll, a 10 percent tax at 130 percent of the average payroll and a 25 percent tax at 160 percent of the average payroll. The owners’ proposal on Wednesday provided for a 75 percent payroll tax above $35 million and a 100 percent tax above $42 million.
The Baltimore Orioles, for example, would pay a payroll tax of $1.2 million (based on their 1994 payroll) under the players’ new proposal; they would pay $7.8 million under the owners’ plan. The owners remain adamant that they need a cost-containment mechanism to curb players’ salaries. The players remain just as adamant that they won’t agree to anything that would ruin the free market, and the president’s deadline appears ever more likely to be tested.
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