Marvin Miller’s Viewpoint: Players Deserve Service Time

Two things to remember before screaming that the baseball players don’t deserve to be credited with service time for the 75 days they were on strike in 1994-95.

--The owners created the bargaining scenario that prompted the union to exercise its only leverage, that of a strike.

--The crediting of seniority or service time is far less liberal in baseball than most industries.

Who says?

The estimable Marvin Miller makes both points.

It was Miller who built the players association into one of the strongest unions in the country after acting as counsel to the steelworkers, one of the other strongest.

“Why should the players be punished [by the withholding of service time] for something they didn’t cause,” Miller said of the strike.

“I’m not talking about my opinion. I’m talking about fact.”

The owners voted to re-open bargaining negotiations with the union a year before the last agreement expired.

They then made the union wait a year before delivering a proposal that included a salary cap they knew the union wouldn’t accept and radical changes in free agency and arbitration, turning back 25 years of negotiating gains by the players.

In the process, the owners withheld a pension payment from receipts of the 1994 All-Star game after pleading with the union not to consider a strike before the game was played.

With no progress in the negotiations and convinced that the owners would declare an impasse and unilaterally implement their salary cap proposal, the players walked Aug. 12, 1994, hoping that leverage would produce meaningful negotiations and a reason to return before the playoffs.

The union, based on owner capitulations at bargaining crossroads in the past, may have miscalculated management unanimity this time, the resolve to change the system at all costs, including the canceling of the World Series.

The strike would last 234 days, but there was one thing the union did not miscalculate: The owners did declare an impasse and did try to implement their own work rules.

The result?

“They were found guilty by the government of unfair labor practice,” Miller said. “They were enjoined by the National Labor Relations Board for the illegal attempt to declare an impasse.

“They were put under injunction by a federal district court, and a federal appeals court, one step below the Supreme Court, unanimously upheld the lower court.

“Besides precedent [the players have always been restored service time] and other factors, the players should be entitled to service time on the basis of the owners’ illegal practices alone.”

Among the other factors, Miller said from his Manhattan apartment, is that the crediting of service time is very different in baseball than in other industries, where it may relate to pension, vacation, seniority promotion.

“In most industries,” Miller said, “the crediting of service time is very liberal. Take a period from 1985 to 1995.

“Even if there’s a layoff, strike, lockout or disability, an employee in most industries is credited with 10 years of continuous service as long as the interruption wasn’t for two years or more.

“It’s far less liberal in baseball.”

In baseball, a season is comprised of 172 days. Service time is accrued in days and only if a player is on the major league roster.

A player who is up in the majors for less than 172 is not credited with a full year toward the two needed for arbitration or the six for free agency.

“A demotion in another industry may mean another desk or less salary, but it doesn’t mean a loss of service time,” Miller said.

“If a player is demoted to the minor leagues, he stops receiving service time. And there have been many occasions when a club has sent a player to the minors just to delay his eligibility for arbitration or free agency by a full year.

“I mean, baseball may be the least liberal of all industries, and I’m always amazed to find how uninformed the owners are about that.

“I was reading the other day where [Atlanta Brave president] Stan Kasten said [of the service time issue] that the players wanted something for nothing. How stupid.

“It shows his ignorance about service time in general and what caused the strike in particular.”

It can be argued, of course, that the monetary rewards of arbitration, free agency and one of the finest pensions in the country compensate for the tougher policy on seniority.

However, the player can play only so many years, and unlike an engineer, can’t go looking for another employer any time he wants.

Chicago White Sox pitcher Alex Fernandez, a potential free agent if service time is restored, has been under control of his team for seven years. If he doesn’t get service time, it will be eight.

It can also be argued that the owners knew from the start the union’s position on service time, agreed with the union that it was always a part of a complex series of trade-offs and should not now allow it to blow apart a proposed settlement in which it is the last significant issue.

Twenty-one votes are needed to ratify an agreement that management negotiator Randy Levine helped produce in frequent consultation with the owners’ labor policy committee and acting Commissioner Bud Selig. It wasn’t done in a vacuum.

How many clubs now oppose the terms--and particularly the service time issue--isn’t certain.

Those small market clubs that may oppose service time on a philosophical basis but would lose considerable revenue-sharing income if the deal dissolves are ultimately expected to follow Selig’s lead and support it.

The Chicago Cubs, White Sox and Florida Marlins will not.

Twenty more players would become eligible for free agency if service time is restored, several more for arbitration.

Some of the argument against service time may be based on selfishness, the potential loss of a key player if it is restored.

Kasten and others argue that the precedent must be broken, that the players have to know there is a price to pay for striking or they will strike again.

Coupled to two tax-free years at the end of the six-year proposal, the opponents argue that the restoration of service time will reinvent the status quo, leaving owners with no tax or cost-constraint system on which to build in the next negotiations, and no deterrent to the players striking again.

“This proposal is no different than the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I and guaranteed World War II,” a National League executive said.

The question can be asked: What labor agreement carries a guarantee against the employees striking? Is there a guarantee in this that the owners won’t lock out?

Of baseball’s seven previous stoppages, three resulted from management lockouts.

The union is making a number of concessions in this. It isn’t a total victory for the owners, but they will emerge with:

--A three-year payroll tax to help curtail spending by the high-revenue clubs, slowing salary growth.

--A revenue-sharing formula by which the high-revenue clubs will contribute to the economic viability of the low-revenue clubs, improving competitive balance.

--A 2.5% tax on player salaries in the first two years of the plan, raising about $50 million, three-fourths of which will go to their revenue-sharing pool and the rest to a joint growth fund.

--The use of a three-member panel to decide arbitration cases, rather than the sometimes bizarre whims of a single arbitrator.

--A reduction in the union’s share of the divisional playoffs from 80% to 60%, returning between $15 million and $40 million to the owners over the life of the contract.

Is service time worth scuttling all of that?

Is service time worth scuttling six years of peace in our time and a chance to revive the industry?

ARMAGEDDON?

An agent close to the negotiations predicts nuclear war if the proposed agreement collapses.

Certainly, it would confirm two things the union has suspected:

Levine, a man they like and trust, never had authority to close a deal (Levine himself may not have realized that), and the owners never intended to ratify any agreement, always wanting to declare an impasse and implement their own terms.

If collapse ensues, the owners, who will have gone through at least five lead negotiators in four years, will have trouble hiring another, and trouble convincing the court they are at impasse.

Miller and other lawyers said it would be months before the owners dared go to court to seek lifting of the injunction and permission to declare an impasse, and even then would have to make a “last and final” offer close to the current proposal they would have just rejected.

On any basis, Miller said, the owners would have a hard time convincing a judge that an impasse exists because they have “rigged” the possibility of a negotiated settlement by the requirement that three-fourths of the owners must approve it.

The three-fourths rule was adopted when the owners voted to re-open talks a year early.

“It was rigged so that a small minority can block an agreement, and I would think that any judge would laugh them out of court,” Miller said. “If that rule existed in other industries there would never be a labor agreement in this country.

“Heck, there would never be a President elected. I mean, with only two candidates, when has one of them received 75% of the vote?

“There would be a few Congressmen and one or two Senators.

“It’s outrageous.”

NAMES AND NUMBERS

--Some views from former Angel General Manager Whitey Herzog, who left two years ago:

On the team’s 1996 decline: “I knew when I left that by the time we got the hitting in place, the pitching was going to be awful. They extended [Mark] Langston and they brought back Jim Abbott when they should have gone out and got [Ken] Hill. I know why they got Abbott back. The Cowboy [Gene Autry] is a nice guy and he had feelings for Abbott, but now Abbott is [1-15], the Cowboy doesn’t own the team, and they’ve got bad pitching troubles.”

On the resignation of Manager Marcel Lachemann: “I’m not surprised. I was saying [not long ago] that wouldn’t it be something if the first two managers fired were the brothers [Rene and Marcel]. Marcel made some silly statements. You can’t take the blame every time one of your players makes a mistake.”

--Ray “Snacks” Shore, a longtime scout with the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies, died of pneumonia Tuesday in St. Louis. Shore, 75, was one of the most popular and knowledgeable men on the baseball scene. He will be missed.