The 26 major league club owners, or certainly a heavy majority, apparently are convinced that the players don`t want to strike. More than likely, some of the moguls will readjust those thoughts down the line, probably in early September when the season approaches its climax and the threat of a strike increases.
According to Don Fehr, the players` new labor leader, the owners`
negotiating team continued to fiddle here Tuesday during a 2 1/2-hour bargaining session, the 27th since talks began seven months ago. At the finish, Lee MacPhail, president of the owners` Player Relations Committee and the owners` chief negotiator, said ”It was an instructive and businesslike meeting.”
A calm and patient head, MacPhail has been saying the same thing after almost every session. Pressed for specifics, MacPhail elaborated: ”We`ve told them how much money we`ve been losing, ad nauseum.”
Minutes later, Fehr, the acting executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, offered his view. ”Nothing significant,” he reported during a brief press conference. Told that MacPhail had described the meeting as businesslike, Fehr laughed and said, ”It was, in the sense that nobody was screaming at each other.”
The critical question, of course, is will there be another strike? The percentages say no. Since 1966, when Marvin Miller, an economist, and Dick Moss, an attorney, arrived from the United Steelworkers to lead the players, 12 collective contracts have been successfully negotiated without a stoppage. There have been two strikes–13 days in 1972 and 50 days in 1981, the latter the first significant shutdown of major league baseball since World War I.
”We came out of it with virtually nothing,” MacPhail has said, an admission that the owners lost the 1981 strike despite collecting $500 million in strike insurance. ”If you strike, you should accomplish something.”
The players, primarily because they have stood united, and secondly because of the genius of Miller, have an unbroken succession of victories. Ten years ago, Encyclopedia Britannica estimated that Miller had won $10 million in salary and pension benefits for the players. The gains pyramid annually. I am neither an accountant nor an actuary, but I wouldn`t be surprised if the players` take in the last 18 years, discounting inflation, is in the neighborhood of $300 million.
Once again, the issue is pension money, the owners` contribution to the players` health and benefit plan. Contribution isn`t quite accurate. In the beginning, the players funded the plan with their money; since then, funding has come from owners` concessions at the bargaining table.
Whatever, the players have been receiving one-third of all national television revenue. Last year it amounted to $15.5 million. Because the owners quadrupled their TV revenue in 1984 when they signed a 4-year, billion-dollar agreement with the networks, the players now would be entitled to $60 million to maintain the one-third ratio.
Fehr insists the players will not settle for a smaller percentage. ”The owners claim this is excessive,” Fehr said. ”All we hear is about the $60 million. But I don`t read anywhere that the owners` share is also being quadrupled. And they`ll still be keeping two-thirds.”
The federal limit on an annual pension is $90,000. According to Barry Rona, counsel for the owners, if the union got the $60 million, a player with 10 years of service would receive the maximum benefit if he didn`t take his pension until the age of 62.
Fehr has indicated that the players would spread some of the new dough around; presumably, some would be diverted to upgrade the pensions of former players who have been largely ignored but are becoming more vocal. Fehr also says that in most industries, the cost to employers for pension and health benefits is about 20 percent of the total salaries. Baseball owners pay approximately $350 million in salaries; $60 million would fall in that range. There are other, newer issues. To prevent salaries from soaring further, the owners want a team cap, similar to that in professional basketball. They also want an arrangement whereby all offers to free agents be reported immediately to the commissioner`s office. That information would be supplied to each club. It would be price-fixing of a sort. The Cubs, for example, wouldn`t offer Rick Sutcliffe $2 million a year if they knew Kansas City`s latest offer was only $900,000.
More than likely, the owners will adjust or eliminate some of these demands as bargaining continues. MacPhail has conceded that nothing ”is set in stone.” He also acknowledged Tuesday that the negotiators are still involved ”in preliminary work.”
Management representatives have shown a sense of humor that was absent in previous neogiations. When Fehr complained that, ”We`re as far apart as New York and Los Angeles,” MacPhail countered with, ”That`s closer than London and Peking.” And when Houston Astros` owner John McMullen insisted the players should be sent to a psychiatrist because ”they`d be crazy” if they struck, Rona said if they did see a shrink it wouldn`t cost them anything because ”It`s probably covered in their benefit plan.”
The current situation is also different in several other areas. In support of their plea of poverty, the owners have opened their books, which, despite the increasing value of the individual franchises, reveals, they say, that most of the teams are headed for the poorhouse. Also, since the `81 strike, the players` annual average salary has doubled to $360,000, the principal reason the owners are convinced the players are not in the mood for a strike.
Fehr has finished a strike authorization poll among the union`s 650 members. When the final tally is in, he said, the vote will be about 635 to 15, and that a ”substantial number” of the 15 dissensions ”are religiously based.”
Of this I am certain: The July 16 All-Star Game in Minneapolis is safe. If there is a strike, it won`t come until early September.
