Progress in Talks Minimal : Baseball: Owners disappointed in union counterproposal.

Management’s formal removal of the implemented salary cap under pressure from the National Labor Relations Board did not produce dramatic progress Saturday as baseball’s labor talks droned closer to President Clinton’s Monday deadline.

In fact, management negotiators, maintaining their pursuit of a cost-containment mechanism, expressed disappointment and said they saw no progress at all in a union counterproposal to the high-rate luxury tax proposed by the owners on Wednesday.

“We don’t see any meaningful movement,” said John Harrington, the owners’ lead negotiator and chief executive officer of the Boston Red Sox. “It was a little disappointing.”

Said Stan Kasten, president of the Atlanta Braves: “There seems to be virtually no change. It’s virtually the same offer we saw more than a month ago.”

The management team said it would study the proposal overnight and consider making a counterproposal today.

Union representatives, hoping to resume talks late Saturday night in Washington, were left waiting at the table, a union official said, without courtesy of an official reply from the owners regarding their intentions.

“The players weren’t happy about that,” the official said.

Meanwhile, the clock continued to tick toward Monday’s deadline, when Clinton has asked special mediator William J. Usery to consider making his own recommendation for a settlement if no progress has been made.

It is not certain what will happen if Usery reaches that conclusion, but it is believed he would take two to three days to frame a recommendation that the Administration would pressure the sides to accept.

If that failed, the Administration could consider asking the sides to accept binding arbitration or to ask Congress for special legislation that would impose Usery’s recommendation as a settlement, a request made under the imperative of a regional economic emergency in the spring training states of Florida and Arizona.

“Bill Usery has advised us most clearly that he must report to the President on Monday, and he would very clearly like to report that this matter is closed,” union leader Donald Fehr said, adding that the players’ proposal of Saturday offered the framework for a settlement.

The union proposal would distribute the same $58 million from the large-revenue clubs to the small-revenue clubs that the owners agreed to in January of 1994. It would raise two-thirds of that through a revenue tax and one-third through a payroll tax on the 15 clubs designated to contribute by the owners in January.

The tax, management people suggested, would do little to depress salary growth. Using 1994 projections, the Baltimore Orioles, for instance, would have been taxed $1.2 million under the players’ proposal and $7.8 million under the two-tiered luxury tax proposed by the owners.

The union proposal would also eliminate arbitration in its current form in exchange for either free agency for all players eligible for arbitration or free agency for four-year players and above and arbitration for the top-ranked two- and three-year players.

The proposal would also establish a minimum salary of $175,000; require two-team expansion by 1997 and the hiring of a chief executive officer within 90 days of a settlement, and implement the previously proposed joint growth fund, with both sides contributing $30 million over the life of a four- or five-year contract.

While waiting for an official reply by the owners, the union is believed to have given further consideration to lifting the signing freeze when rollback of the salary-cap system becomes official on Monday and, perhaps, to lifting the strike completely and have players report when spring camps open in two weeks.

With the cap off and no settlement in place, that move by the union might leave the owners in a difficult corner. Could they consider a lockout or their own signing freeze--a suspect legal move--at a time when the Administration is pressing for an agreement?

Clinton appeared Saturday at the hotel where negotiations are taking place but did not meet with officials from either side. He was accompanying his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, to a Wellesley College reunion. His mood Monday may not be quite so festive.

In an interview published in today’s editions of New York Newsday, Clinton said: “I’m the President, and I ought to do something. I’m a baseball fan, and this thing just isn’t right. . . .

“It’s a metaphor for what’s wrong with this country sometimes: A lot of money controlled by a few people who can’t decide how to divide it up.”