Baseball players will be randomly tested for steroids, but the union and management still differ on several issues that must be resolved before a comprehensive plan is implemented.
Negotiators met twice Friday and the Players Association proposed changes to its steroid-testing plan seven days before baseball hits a strike deadline.
"They moved modestly in our direction but we remain apart in that area," Rob Manfred, management's labor lawyer, said of the union's new steroid-testing proposal.
The players are expected to walk off the job before Friday's games if an agreement is not reached.
Several significant issues remain on the table, with the most pressing revenue sharing and a luxury tax. Steroid testing is unresolved but is not expected to impede a deal. Negotiators said they will meet all weekend, beginning at 1 p.m. today.
On the issue of steroid testing, the union earlier proposed a two-stage process during which players initially would be randomly tested only for survey results. If in either 2003 or '04, more than 5 percent tested positive, random testing would commence for two years. Management wants that threshold lowered. Another issue is how players will be disciplined.
Manfred said steroid testing would not hinder an agreement "if they changed their position."
The owners will make a counterproposal, possibly as early as today.
The larger issue of a luxury tax remains unresolved but the union is expected to offer its first proposal in more than a week on that subject as early as today.
"The players will move a little," said one source who is not a negotiator, "but they won't go crazy."
As of late Friday afternoon, the union was deliberating on what that luxury-tax proposal would look like, and if it would be piggybacked with a revenue-sharing plan. Union executive director Don Fehr was said to be wrestling with the numbers.
If the union moves too little, it risks getting admonished by management, which received the same treatment from Fehr last Thursday when it bumped its luxury-tax threshold from $100 million to $102 million. The union responded to that by setting a strike date.
With only a week to go before the strike date, the union has to be sure to time its concessions correctly. The union convened a 90-minute conference call Friday to update its membership on how it will proceed.
It is believed the union's luxury-tax proposal is likely not to drop the threshold below $125 million, with the number increasing over three years. The previous proposal started at $130 million and rose to $135 million and $140 million with a tax rate beginning at 15 percent and capping at 30 percent for repeat offenders. It is unclear if the new proposal will increase the tax rate.
Management's plan begins at a $102-million threshold with provisions for cost-of-living increases in the third and fourth years. Tax rates start at 37.5 percent and top at 50 percent for a fourth-time offender. Manfred said the fourth-year tax is "very" important. Management wants to keep a wealthy team from overspending in the last year of the agreement because it fears that will set thresholds too high for the next collective-bargaining agreement.
Manfred declined to say what management considers significant movement on the luxury tax, but one official said anything less than a $5 million reduction by the union would not be received favorably.
"They're going to make whatever proposal they are going to make. We'll react at the point in time they make it," Manfred said. "I'm not going to speculate over what is significant or how I'm going to react when I don't know what the proposal is."
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