Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 16, 1994 TAG: 9411170082
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
All the while, though, they stuck with their coveted salary cap. It was a strategy that didn't work, and a strategy that will change Thursday.
The owners' new head negotiator, John Harrington, says the owners will back off their salary cap proposal for the time being and make another offer when talks resume in Herndon, Va.
``We've been discussing some alternative proposals we've had in mind for months, deciding which one to put on the table,'' said Harrington, the Boston Red Sox's chief executive officer.
The new buzzword is ``tax.''
``It's not a salary cap in the strictest terms,'' Harrington said Monday night from his home in Massachusetts. ``A tax concept can look like a salary cap, and any tax plan is meant to put some controls on labor costs.
``All payrolls would be taxed at a low percentage. All clubs would be affected above a certain level.''
Harrington would not discuss proposed tax rates. Others on the management team would not comment on the shift in offers.
Union officials took a wait-and-see attitude.
``There's no proposal - yet,'' said Mark Belanger, a union official.
``I wouldn't get overly optimistic about movement off the cap because there are tax programs that are worse than a salary cap and tax programs that are better,'' said Gene Orza, the union's legal counsel. ``It doesn't make me more pessimistic or optimistic. I just want to see it.''
At the major-league general managers' meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., there was little reaction.
``I think at this point all we can do is continue to do our baseball business and let the people in charge there take care of that business,'' said Walt Jocketty, general manager of the St.Louis Cardinals. ``There's nothing we can do about it.''
Doug Melvin, general manager of the Texas Rangers, said, ``We have to let them handle it. We just have to wait and see.''
A tax plan was discussed by owners and players during informal talks in early September, when some thought the postseason could be saved.
The players offered a plan under which the top 16 revenue-producing clubs would pay 1.6 percent of their income into a fund to be distributed to small-market clubs with lesser revenues.
A similar tax on the top 16 payrolls also would be distributed to the poorer clubs.
Bud Selig, baseball's acting commissioner, rejected the plan Sept.9, saying the tax rate would be insignificant.
Harrington said the owners' new offer would be different. The details and proposed rates were being worked out Tuesday as owners spoke on conference calls in preparation for Thursday's meeting with the union and mediator W.J. Usery.
Owners will caucus with Usery today at a hotel near Dulles Airport. After that, both sides should ``be prepared to remain in negotiations for several days if necessary,'' Usery said in a letter released Tuesday.
The players' union expects the owners' proposal to be complicated, and it could take a day or two for them to fully understand it.
``The players said the top 16 teams by revenue and payroll should be taxed. We feel there should be some other rationale for at what level payrolls should be taxed. These are some of the variations we are discussing,'' Harrington said.
``We're going to try to marry the best parts of the [revenue] tax with a general payroll tax. The players understand our main theme is to provide some collective control on labor costs.''
If a new collective bargaining agreement is not reached by mid-December, the owners may choose to impose their terms on the players, which is their right under federal labor law.
If they choose to do so, as Harrington pointed out, the implemented system might be based on their original proposal containing a salary cap.
Usery is trying to mediate a settlement before then so the two sides don't go back to the polarized positions they held until three days of meetings last week in Rye Brook, N.Y.
Tuesday was the 96th day of the strike - the longest work stoppage in baseball history.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***