Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 14, 1993 TAG: 9307140092
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BALTIMORE LENGTH: Medium
A few hours before the All-Star Game, Donald Fehr, the union's executive director, said he was growing impatient with management's lack of a contract proposal. Union officials said they will discuss options with players in the next few weeks.
"The players' greatest leverage is not 1994, it's Labor Day 1993 or thereabout," Fehr said. Not striking, Fehr said, "runs the risk of a much longer confrontation later next year."
Management negotiator Richard Ravitch, sitting a few feet from Fehr during an All-Star town meeting on baseball, dismissed Fehr's statements.
"I think it's all bluff," Ravitch said. "He's not going to scare the owners."
The four-year collective bargaining agreement runs through Dec. 31, but owners voted 15-13 on Dec. 7, 1992, to reopen provisions dealing with free agency and salary arbitration. By reopening, owners gave players the right to strike this year and gave themselves the option of a lockout, an action they then declined to exercise.
Fehr is fearful that if players threaten several hundred-million dollars of postseason television money from CBS and don't strike this season, clubs will lock out players in the spring. Without the CBS money, some clubs would have difficulty paying back loans.
"They've got a problem on their hands, don't they?" Fehr said of a possible strike. "Maybe they make a settlement."
Owners want players to agree to a salary cap and a fixed percentage of the teams' revenues in exchange for large-market teams sharing a greater percentage of their local broadcasting money with small-market clubs. Because teams haven't agreed on revenue sharing among themselves, Ravitch hasn't made a proposal to Fehr.
"The owners reopened the contract last December for reasons I now consider almost whimsical," Fehr said.
Baseball has been stopped by four strikes and three lockouts since 1972, and many fans have grown tired of the constant bickering.
"I'm not being provocative. I'm not attempting to threaten," Fehr told fans at the town meeting, organized by USA Today Baseball Weekly.
Ravitch, hired by the owners in late 1991, was critical of the clubs' previous positions in labor negotiations.
"We have an economic situation in baseball that came about from a long history of the owners treating the players like serfs," he said. "There has not been a serious labor negotiation since the current system has been in place," Ravitch said. "The union has been smarter and tougher. . . . The owners have always underestimated the leverage the union has had."
Ravitch has scheduled a special major-league meeting during the second week of August in Kohler, Wis., and he hopes teams will agree then to a revenue-sharing plan contingent on a salary cap.
by CNB