Major-league baseball players may have one of the strongest unions in sports, but they will be tested as never before as they head into the unpredictable arena of legal combat without the antitrust protection other sports enjoy.
Owners of the 28 major-league teams last night declared an impasse in their negotiations with the Major League Baseball Players Association and unilaterally imposed new work rules, including a cap on salaries that the players bitterly have opposed.
"What the owners have done is completely legal under labor law, but they have entered a vast and unchartered territory," said William B. Briggs, adjunct professor of law at Cornell University and an expert in sports law and labor relations.
"Never before has the legal doctrine of implementation after bargaining to impasse come smack up against the antitrust exemption," said Briggs.
Federal labor law allows employers to impose new work rules when they can't agree with their union. The workers' immediate recourse is to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that the owners failed to bargain in good faith.
Such complaints are common in labor disputes but are hard to prove and offer only limited help to the union. For example, the board cannot impose a settlement on either side, but only force them back to the bargaining table.
At issue is not whether one side or the other was intransigent, but only if the employer genuinely tried to reach an agreement. The labor board must consider the employer's overall conduct to try to gauge the intent of bargaining, ruling for the union if it can be shown that management entered talks with "predetermined resolve not to budge from an initial position," in the words of one judge.
"Bargaining in good faith doesn't require either side to make concessions. It doesn't mean the employer can't stick to something that they need for his business," said Baltimore attorney Ed Gutman, a labor law specialist who represents management.
If the board finds there has not been an impasse in bargaining, it could order the owners to pay players whatever they would have received under the old contract. But that would be difficult to calculate in the complex world of baseball's individual player contracts, where the minimum salary is $109,000, but the average player makes $1 million.
And the board can't solve the dispute.
"It's not like the labor board could say: 'This is what you should have decided.' It doesn't work that way," said Briggs, who has been a consultant for the NFL Players Association.
The union has hinted that it will ask the labor board for an injunction under an obscure and little-used subsection of labor law known by the designation 10-J. Such an order could reverse the owners' contract imposition and order bargaining to resume.
Former players union head Marvin Miller sought but failed to win an injunction in the 1981 baseball dispute. In that case, then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn had said at the start of talks that the game could not survive with its current salary system.
The football players also sought, but failed, to win such a labor board ruling in 1982.
"I've never seen it done because the labor board as a rule doesn't like to get involved with negotiations," Gutman said.
The labor board already has agreed to pursue one charge filed by the union, alleging the teams illegally failed to make $7.8 million in benefits payments from All-Star Game revenues. The union believes this could help make its case that the owners have not acted in good faith throughout the negotiations.
Possibly working in the union's favor is that the most pro-labor president in 12 years is in office and has appointed three of the five labor board members, including its general counsel.
The labor board has said it will expedite its review of the case, but the investigation could take weeks or even months. And then the loser can appeal to the general counsel in Washington, but not to court.
"If the players lose at the NLRB level, they've got no other options in court," said Lisa Pike, a sports law specialist and professor at the University of Massachusetts.
The Supreme Court has bestowed special status on baseball, exempting if from antitrust laws designed to promote competition in commerce. Players in other sports have been able to drag the leagues into court and accuse them of illegally restricting wages, attempting to establish monopoly control over pay.
Football players used the courts effectively after their 1987 strike was called off after 24 days amid widespread defections from players when the owners fielded replacements. The union went to court and even decertified itself as a collective bargaining agent to deny the teams an antitrust exemption for union contracts. The two sides eventually reached agreement at the urgings of a federal judge who hinted he would issue a decision unfavorable to both sides.
"With the antitrust exemption, the baseball owners are certainly in a strong and favorable position," said James Gray, assistant director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University in Milwaukee.
The baseball union's only hope would be congressional repeal of the antitrust exemption, and then a lawsuit -- another long and uncertain process. The players could chose to return to the field during this process, but that would diminish the pressure on Congress and the teams.
Incoming chairmen of key congressional committees have signaled interest in repealing the exemption.