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| Friday, November 16 Legal wrangling begins over contraction By Darren Rovell ESPN.com |
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For the first time since Nov. 6, when Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced the owners' unilateral decision to contract two teams, the players' union has momentum on its side. A Minneapolis judge ruled Friday that the Minnesota Twins, among one of the teams speculated for elimination from the 30-team league, are legally bound to play its 2002 schedule in the Metrodome. Although the league and Twins owner Carl Pohlad are expected to appeal the ruling, it appears the league is now on the defensive. Officials from the Major League Baseball Players' Association and the league's offices were unavailable for comment on the ruling late Friday, but Roger Noll, a leading sports economist and an expert on sports law, said the ruling is the first of many to come.
Call the Minneapolis ruling symbolic at this point, but the ultimate authority of what is right or wrong could lie in the hands of Shyam Das, baseball's permanent arbitrator who is expected to hear the union's grievance with the owners' threat of contraction in December. A decision in arbitration is likely to come before the Minnesota Court of Appeals could rule on Friday's lower-court decision, and before a bill could be passed in Congress to remove parts of baseball's antitrust exemption. Given that many politicians deemed it inappropriate for the government to straighten out baseball's labor disputes in 1994, odds are slim that the resolve of politicians would be different now in a time of war. Although the owners took the first shot, the union appears to have the terms of the now-expired Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) on its side. While contraction is not addressed specifically in the CBA, the players' association argues that the result of eliminating teams by league owners involves other elements of the agreement -- such as scheduling and the future of players' contracts -- that require negotiation with the union before implementation. While there are many points of interpretation in the CBA, an agreement that contains broad language that is often left open to interpretation, sports labor experts told ESPN.com the most scrutinized portion of the agreement likely will be Article II, which can be found on page 1: "The Clubs recognize the association as the sole and exclusive collective bargaining agent for all major league players, and individuals who may become major league players during the term of this agreement, with regard to all terms and conditions of employment." The owners think that subtracting clubs has nothing to do with "the terms and conditions of employment," while the players' association obviously differ. "(Contraction) does refer to all terms and conditions of employment," said Paul Staudohar, a sports labor expert and author of Diamond Minds: Baseball and Labor. "But I wouldn't say the union�s grievance is really ripe at this point, either. It could be premature for an arbitrator to rule now because nothing has happened. That is, until the owners say, 'We are moving these specific franchises now.' " Noll agreed: "An owner can say I don't like your looks and I'm going to fine you, but in order to have a grievance, he might have to fine you first." But David Sloane, agent of Toronto Blue Jays slugger Carlos Delgado and a commercial arbitrator in Florida, said he thinks the players' union has a foolproof case. "It makes me wonder how an intelligent group of people, smart enough to make enough money to buy a baseball team, gather together and come up with something this ill-conceived and this stupid," Sloane said. "The union is not something that started a year ago," he said. "There has been a process in place for how to handle differences of an opinion and the owners have completely disregarded that procedure. It's unfair for the owners to unilaterally say we are going to contract teams and we�re not going to discuss the issue with (the union) at all.� An arbitration schedule is currently being negotiated, but the players' association has its executive board meetings from Dec. 4-6 and baseball's winter meetings run from Dec. 9-13. Since the arbitrator's powers are widely ranged, Staudohar said it would be hard to predict how Das would rule. He could rule on whether baseball can contract or require the league to negotiate contraction with the players' union. Noll said he thinks Das will do the latter. Sloane said he thinks the case will make its way to the National Labor Relations Board, which could review whether contraction without the union's cooperation is legal under the NLRB Act of 1935. But Dan Silverman, former director of the NLRB Region 2 office, which handled previous labor rights cases between the league and the union, said the NLRB would not make a final decision. "Whatever could happen before the NLRB board, the matter would still have to be resolved between the parties," Silverman said. "All the legal maneuverings are just designed to get an upper hand in those negotiations." If it goes that route, by the time the NLRB decides whether it will support the union, little more than a month may be all that remains before players begin reporting for spring training. Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at Darren.Rovell@espn.com |
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