Owners Abandon Bid to Impose Salary Cap : Baseball: Luxury tax now proposed instead, but union finds its high rates unacceptable.

Facing growing political pressure to end the baseball strike, owners made a major shift Wednesday when they abandoned their salary cap proposal for a luxury tax.

The new offer, made as talks resumed after a 40-day break, moved the owners off their central demand to reduce player salaries to 50 percent of revenue.

While the owners had offered two luxury tax plans in November and December, those plans would have worked as caps since both contained escalators that would have raised the tax rates without limit until the players’ share of revenue declined from 58 percent to 50 percent.

Union officials said the size of the luxury tax in Wednesday’s offer was unacceptable, but the structure could lead to an agreement if owners are willing to substantially reduce the tax rates.

“By removing the cost-certainty requirement, we have removed the chief objection expressed by players,” said Boston Red Sox chief executive officer John Harrington, the owners’ lead negotiator. “Our proposal tracks much of the framework first offered by the union.”

President Clinton, who has set a Monday deadline for progress, continued to apply pressure, calling the renewed bargaining a “last process.”

Union head Donald Fehr was muted publicly in his response to the proposal, saying his side needed to analyze it overnight. Two union officials, requesting anonymity, said the plan was unacceptable.

“It looks similar to the proposal given earlier,” free agent outfielder Brett Butler said.

Away from the bargaining table, players mounted a public relations offensive, filling a hotel “war” room with fax machines and phones to get their point of view out. Players also held a party for all Senators and Congressmen at--appropriately enough--Union Station, the redeveloped train depot near Capitol Hill.

About two dozen players spent the day lobbying for a repeal of the owners’ antitrust exemption. The union and its consultants bought at least 600 baseballs for players to sign at the party.

The owners’ plan proposes a two-tiered tax: 75 percent on the amount of payrolls between $35 million and $42 million and 100 percent on the amount over $42 million.

The Detroit Tigers, under the owners’ method of calculation, had the top 1994 payroll at $56,780,020. This plan, if fully implemented in 1994, would have cost them an additional tax of more than $20 million.

In the union’s last plan, offered Dec. 22, players proposed a tax of 10 percent on payrolls that exceeded 130 percent of the average ($40.5 million) and a 25 percent tax on the amount above 160 percent of the average ($49.8 million.) Under that plan, only three teams would have reached the 130 percent level, raising a total of just $586,000 in tax. No team would have reached the highest level.

Several management officials said the numbers in the owners’ latest offer were less important than the framework. Even if the union counters with extremely low numbers, it could lead to negotiations that would end the sport’s eighth work stoppage since 1972.

“There was a recognition by both sides that there was significant pressure being applied,” Fehr said after six hours of meetings. “If we do not resolve it, we could expect more.”

Talks resumed just six days before the deadline Clinton set last week. The president has threatened to ask mediator W.J. Usery to propose a solution that would end the walkout, which began Aug. 12. And the National Labor Relations Board said it will rule within two weeks on the unfair labor practice charges filed by both sides.

Clinton, speaking at the Pentagon, once again mentioned the strike Wednesday.

“I am doing whatever I can do personally, but the less I say about it the better,” he said. “I think Mr. Usery, our mediator, should be given a chance to work through this last process to try to come up with an agreement between the parties. If they don’t, I’ve urged him to put his own suggestions on the table.”

“We definitely are feeling the outside pressure,” Colorado Rockies chairman Jerry McMorris said.

Owners plan to start spring training with replacement players on Feb. 16.