Clinton Steps Up To Plate As Sides Struggle With Taxation, White House Set To Draft Its Plan
Taking on an assignment slightly more serious and more perilous than tossing out the ceremonial first ball on opening day, President Clinton formally threw himself into the sixmonth-old baseball strike on Sunday.
Clinton, as concerned as any fan about the strike but in a position to do something about it, met for 35 minutes late Sunday afternoon in the Oval Office with W.J. Usery, the mediator, and Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
Usery and Reich said the president directed Usery to report to him by 2 p.m. PST today, the deadline Clinton had set for the two sides to reach a settlement or show substantial progress, or face dealing with other peoples’ solutions.
“I’ll talk to him in the morning,” Usery said. “I don’t think I’ll get it over there (before 2 p.m.).” He referred to the recommended proposal he had said earlier he would deliver to Clinton today.
“It became evident to me,” the mediator said at a news conference at the Mayflower Hotel, where talks are being held, “that at the pace we were going, it would take a long time to get where we were going so we had to expedite where we were going. I decided it was time for me to follow through on the president’s request because everyone wants to see the strike settled.”
At a later news briefing following the White House meeting, Reich said: “The next 24 hours are going to be crucial. It is vitally important that the owners and the players reach an agreement.”
Reich said Clinton “emphasized the urgency of bringing this problem to a rapid settlement.”
“He was very emphatic, expressed the desire of the fans of the United States to get on with it, to reach a settlement of this as fast as possible and to make sure that there was a 1995 season, to make sure there’s a spring training,” Reich said.
Usery, who delivered Clinton’s message to each side separately, emphasized that the president preferred that the two sides reach an agreement voluntarily.
He added, “I listened to the president, I listened to the things that he said he had talked to others about in this dispute and I know we must try to do the job with all we possibly can.”Usery, who met with Reich and
Bruce Lindsey, deputy White House counsel, for about an hour before the Oval Office session, decided to formulate his own proposal after concluding what had been apparent since the owners and players began the arduous process of trying to forge a new collective bargaining agreement: They are fixed firmly at opposite ends of a payroll-tax system that the owners desperately want in order to control player salaries.
The players have grudgingly accepted the idea of a tax, but they have no desire to see it be so high that it would inhibit clubs from spending freely on salaries. The two sides are this far apart: The Detroit Tigers, who had the highest payroll and thus would have paid the highest taxes last season, would have been assessed $20 million under the owners’ plan, but $2.2 million by the players.
Usery, a former labor secretary, declined to say what his proposal might look like, but acknowledged that it would cover “the points that have been contested between the parties.” He said he would present the proposal to each team of negotiators after returning from the White House.
xxxx Strike update After mediator W.J. Usery said no major progress was made, President Clinton ordered the parties to the table and told Usery to report to him today. Owners’ last proposal was for a 75-percent tax on team payrolls between $35 million and $42 million, and a 100-percent tax on amounts above that. Players’ last proposal amounted to a 5-percent tax on team payrolls between $20.3 million and $52.9 million, a 15-percent tax on the amount between $52.9 million to $65.1 million, and a 25-percent tax above that.