MLB contraction decision delayed

Posted 6:57AM on Saturday 13th July 2002 ( 23 years ago )

NEW YORK - While baseball players and owners agreed to give the arbitrator in the contraction grievance an extension until next month, the union agreed to management's concept of a worldwide draft. Arbitrator Shyam Das heard 20 days of testimony from nine witnesses from Dec. 4 to April 10 and had told the sides he would try to issue a decision by Monday. At Das' request, players and owners agreed to give him until Aug. 1. Because of the delay, the sides pushed back until Aug. 15 the deadline for owners to give the union a tentative schedule for the 2003 season. They already had pushed back that deadline from July 1 to Aug. 1. Players claim the Nov. 6 vote to eliminate two teams violated their labor contract. Management, blocked from contraction by the Minnesota courts, wants to know if it has the right to eliminate teams for the 2003 season. In Friday's negotiating session, the first since June 27, the union said for the first time it would agree to a single worldwide draft of amateur players, proposing that it be 16 rounds. In the past, the union advocated a separate draft of players from outside the United States and Canada. ``By moving to a single draft, we recognize that we're going to have to work through issues like when international players are going to be eligible,'' union lawyer Michael Weiner said. ``Our proposal is conditioned on working through it.'' In the United States, including Puerto Rico, and Canada, players are eligible for the amateur draft in the year their high-school class is graduated. Outside the United States, players become eligible to be signed if they turn 17 by the end of the season they sign for. The draft currently is 50 rounds. Owners originally offered to cut it to 40 rounds, then proposed to limit it to 38. Rob Manfred, management's top lawyer, called the union's proposal ``a positive thing.'' ``Getting to a single draft is a move in our direction. We have a ways to go,'' Manfred said. ``Sixteen rounds when you have to run six minor league teams (per major league club) is not really adequate.'' The sides did not discuss the central issues of disagreement: Management's proposal to increase the amount of locally shared revenue among clubs from 20 percent to 50 percent, and its plan to have a 50 percent luxury tax on the portions of payrolls above $98 million. Management lawyers are awaiting the union's response. ``It's really their timetable, not ours,'' Manfred said. The sides have additional bargaining sessions scheduled for July 18, 19, 24, 25 and 26. Fearful that owners may attempt to declare an impasse in the fall and change work rules, players are considering an August or September strike, which would be baseball's ninth work stoppage since 1972. Union head Donald Fehr is visiting the 30 teams, and the union's executive board is asking players for the authority to set a strike date.

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