Players Union

NEW YORK-- Major-league owners didn't make a contract proposal to the players union in a meeting yesterday that did nothing to lessen the possibility of a late-season strike.This was the third meeting since March between the two sides, who have yet to do more than exchange preliminary financial information.The sides scheduled another meeting Monday in Los Angeles, but it is expected to be next month, at the earliest, before owners make their formal proposal for a new salary compensation system that will include a salary cap to trigger revenue sharing.

The last thing the despicable New York Mets need is another seven-figure free agent who can't play baseball. But they are probably going to get one whether they need her or not.Her? Yeah, her. If I know anything about personal injury juries, the men who administer baseball's Devil's Island will be wise to offer the parents of Amanda Santos, age 2, the little girl with the burned face you might have seen on ESPN Wednesday night, something close to the $2.5 million a year Vince Coleman steals.

Most years at baseball's winter meetings, the most important announcements are the last to be made. A free-agent signing at 3 in the morning. A blockbuster trade as most general managers are checking out of the hotel.This year, the meetings figure to work in reverse. Events later in the week may be worth noting. But the biggest news is due tomorrow.The key announcement: Whether there will be a baseball season in 1993.The 28 team owners can all but answer that question if, as expected, they reveal in Louisville, Ky., their decision whether to reopen their labor contract with the players union before next season.

It's tempting to view the $1 billion-a-year sports trading card industry as "Big Business."But "Big Labor" might be more like it.Beginning with baseball in 1967, most of the major sports unions have obtained the rights to market the names and faces of their members in lucrative group deals for trading cards, board and computer games and other sports-oriented products.The licensing revenues, boosted by trading card mania, have outrun dues as the main source of cash for the unions. Last year, the players associations of baseball, football and hockey grossed more than $90 million from the arrangements, according to federal reports and the associations.

Commissioner Earl Foreman, Baltimore Blast owner Ed Hale, Blast coach Kenny Cooper and the Cleveland Crunch have been named in papers filed by the Major Indoor Soccer League Players Association charging unfair labor practices.The players union charges that those unfair practices included threats of blackballing players who continued to resist the salary cap reduction, and the blackballing of at least two players from the league.The complaint states that:* Foreman, Hale, Cooper "and other officers, agents and representatives" of the league interrogated players and created the impression of surveillance regarding which players continued to oppose a reduction in the collectively bargained salary cap.* Cooper and others threatened to blackball Major Soccer League players who continued to oppose a reduction in the salary cap.* Since near the end of July 1991, the MSL has refused to bargain with the MISLPA, the certified bargaining representative of the players, bypassing the union and imposing unilateral changes in salary and working conditions on its employees.

EMMITSBURG -- A breakthrough might be near in the dispute between missing forward John Williams and the Washington Bullets.NBA Players Association executive directorCharles Grantham said yesterday that he is seeking an arbitration hearing on Williams' disputed back pay within the next two weeks.As he did last year, Williams, 24, has not reported to the Bullets training camp at Mount St. Mary's College. At issue is the salary withheld from his reported $1.2 million contract.Acting through his Los Angeles-based agent, Fred Slaughter, the five-year NBA veteran has sought arbitration since March to recover an estimated $368,000, the sum the Bullets deducted for the 49 games Williams missed last season while he battled a persistent weight problem.

The Major Soccer League players union -- saying team owners have gone to the well once too often -- yesterday rejected cuts in salaries and roster sizes.And Baltimore Blast owner Ed Hale, who described the proposed rollbacks as "non-negotiable," said that if they were not accepted, one of the options was to fold the league."That is one of our options," said Hale. "We are checking with our attorneys to see what our alternatives are."A spokesman for commissioner Earl Foreman said an announcement would be made today.

The Major League Baseball Players Association celebrated an anniversary last week. Twenty-five years ago, the labor organization, as we know it, came into being with the appointment of Marvin Miller as its head.Miller gave the association its heart, its soul, its spirit. He carried the players light years from where he found them, from the time when they had little more than gloves, bats, uniforms and indentured servitude.Baseball players now have free agency and salary escalators that are inclusive, not exclusive, when it comes to management's sharing of the wealth.