MLB’s push for federal mediation could be ‘win-win’ PR play for owners, source saysAs one player agent surmised, Major League Baseball’s push for federal mediation in collective bargaining talks is a “win-win” for the commissioner’s office, even if MLB knows the players are unlikely to sign on for the process.
The league is positioning its move as earnest.
“What couldn’t be positive about bringing in an experienced and positive neutral mediator?” said a league source.
Others aren’t convinced.
“If union says no, they win,” the agent said. “If union says yes, they go through this process and burn a couple of weeks, and win.”
If the union says no to mediation — the most likely outcome for a few reasons — then MLB will still have at least a small feather in its cap: it can say that it attempted to use mediators, and the union would not. It’s potentially a way of positioning the players as obstructionists.
Why wouldn’t the players go through with the process? For one thing, they likely fear mediation can involve splitting the baby, to an extent. In the players’ view, the league hasn’t moved much in their direction at all. Splitting it down the middle, or even close to it, then, could inherently benefit management at a time when players are looking for significant changes.
Now, mediation is not binding, which lessens the risk for players. But there’s a PR hit for players if mediators recommend something other than what they are pursuing. And the process would take time as things start to get urgent. The passage of time, some in the industry believe, would also benefit the owners, regardless of what the mediator would recommend.
“Betting on the players getting desperate and cracking the union,” the agent said. “It’s been two months and they haven’t made any progress. They (at MLB) have zero urgency.”
Another agent, though, thinks that if the league is thinking along these lines, it’s making a poor bet.
“Why does MLB win by wasting a few weeks? They are severely underestimating the players’ resolve,” the agent said.
But another major reason players are likely to pass? The parties went through federal mediation with MLB in 1994-95 in a dramatic process, and those on the players’ side roundly ripped the process in 2019 interviews with The Athletic.
“It was a joke. It had no value,” said Don Fehr, head of the MLBPA during the 1994-95 strike. “And there were all kind of agendas at work in the mediation that had nothing to do with the agendas of the parties trying to resolve the dispute.”
Said another top lawyer at the union, Gene Orza: “They came in with what they thought was a halfway proposal, which the owners jumped all over. The owners approved the mediators’ proposal in about a minute and a half.
“The guy virtually eliminated free agency. They just didn’t know what they were doing. That was obvious. They were going to try to split a baby, as if there was one single baby that was going to be split. I went crazy when I heard from one of the mediators.”
The owners didn’t see it that way. Back then, commissioner Rob Manfred was outside counsel at MLB.
“Some historical context is kind of important: Mediators don’t ordinarily recommend solutions. They’re process people,” Manfred said. “They help the parties get through a deal. They don’t like to say, “This is what you should do.” It’s very unusual. So the fact the president asked them to make a recommendation was very unusual.
“And when the recommendation came down, we were not jumping up and down. At least my client wasn’t jumping up and down about the recommendation. We had to convince, and as a group, come to a consensus that the recommendation was acceptable to the clubs. We thought that was a very, very positive step.”
Federal mediation, back in 1994-95, eventually led to the White House getting involved, during the Bill Clinton administration. But because the players thought the mediation process was working in the owners’ favor, the White House’s involvement didn’t move the process along.
“Usually — as a matter of fact without exception, I believe, in the history of American labor relations — what happens is, if the president calls you to the White House after his mediators made a recommendation, he finds a way to make that deal happen,” Manfred said. “Obviously, we were extraordinarily disappointed with the fact that we left the White House with no deal.”
― ✖, Friday, 4 February 2022 06:10 (two years ago) link