Impasse

Marvin Miller, the former head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, changed baseball's labor situation forever with arbitration and free agency.Today Miller envisions a whole new ballgame. If the strike cancels the World Series and the owners declare a labor impasse and implement a salary cap, Miller said the striking players could be working for a rival league next season."If there are some real entrepreneurs out there, you might see some competition for the first time," Miller said.

Baseball labor talks are expected to resume early today in Leesburg, Va., but the joint meeting figures to be little more than a prelude to some collective bargaining fireworks next week.The owners have a proposal on the table that would severely tax teams that break a soft payroll ceiling. They are waiting for an official response from the Major League Baseball Players Association, and still might be waiting when they convene an important ownership meeting in Chicago on Monday.Management spokesman John Harrington has confirmed that the owners are going to Chicago to discuss the possibility of declaring an impasse in the negotiations and implementing new work rules.

Did the owners blink?The deadlocked baseball negotiations are expected to be resumed next week with individual owners at the bargaining table for the first time, but it is unclear whether that represents a change in attitude on the part of baseball management.The owners previously had been barred from direct participation in collective bargaining by an internal rule that designated chief negotiator Richard Ravitch as sole bargaining agent. Thursday, they agreed to a proposal by federal mediators to rescind that rule and send five owners to New York to join the stalled negotiations.

The Right Thing In School TalksOn July 21, the Carroll County Board of Education has to make a decision whether to accept, to reject or to change the recommendation of Seymour Strongin, who arbitrated the Carroll Association of School Employees (CASE) impasse.After negotiations came to a standstill between the board's team and CASE negotiators, the board's team called the talks at an impasse. Mr. Strongin was accepted by both sides as the arbitrator to resolve the dispute. . . .Frustrated with the non-negotiable position of the board's team to resolve the issue of seniority in mediation, Mr. Strongin reviewed the facts and issued his recommendations.

Howard County and police union officials have ended a contract impasse with an agreement that brings officers a step closer to receiving one of the biggest pay increases in recent memory.Both sides had anticipated the impasse would last about two months because of arbitration, but said they wanted to end it earlier to be able to hire 13 officers from other jurisdictions. The department is in tough competition with other regional police agencies -- some of which have raised their officers' pay -- and would not advertise the positions until a salary structure was finalized.

ROSEMONT, Ill. -- Major-league owners let another deadline go by without carrying out their threat to declare an impasse in baseball's protracted labor dispute, voting instead to authorize unilateral implementation of their salary cap proposal if an agreement is not reached in the next week.The vote was 25-3, with the Orioles, New York Mets and Toronto Blue Jays voicing disapproval for a management strategy that can be viewed from two very different perspectives.The owners are calling it an olive branch, a last-ditch effort to convince the Major League Baseball Players Association that implementation is the last resort rather than the master plan.

WASHINGTON -- The chairwoman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority recently told a congressional subcommittee that the agency has reduced the number of pending cases to its lowest number in years despite a growing caseload and a dwindling budget.Jean McKee, the chairwoman, said the FLRA has steadily improved its handling of cases, closing 522 during the 1992 fiscal year, a jump of 11 percent over the previous year.At the end of January 1993, the number of cases pending was 179, the lowest in the history of the agency, she said.

With county officials already talking about the need to trim this year's school budget, the school system is gearing up for what may be its toughest year in memory.Earlier this month, Executive Robert R. Neall asked departments to voluntarily cut spending because of an anticipated $10 million budget shortfall. The school system, working with a $341 million budget, is being asked to cut about $5.5 million.That was not good news for school officials, who already were debating whether they had been given enough money to avoid cutting school programs.

ATLANTA -- Special mediator William J. Usery said yesterday that he has urged ownership to back away from the threat to implement a salary cap, but baseball's long-running labor dispute still appears to be moving in that direction.Usery, who addressed a crowd of about 90 players during the second day of a Major League Baseball Players Association executive board meeting, said that implementation would be counterproductive to his goal of forging a new relationship between the players and owners.

The Town Council unanimously passed a budget Wednesday that includesno tax increase.The county's decision to maintain the trash tipping fee at $15 per ton enabled the council to hold property taxes to the present 45 cents per $100 of assessed value.In other business, Steven C. Horn, county planner, said the blockgrant request to address the town's storm water drainage problems had been forwarded to Annapolis by the April 30 deadline.Mayor James C. Carlisle said he had received a letter of support for the application from Delegate Donald B. Elliott, R-Carroll, Howard.