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Representatives for Major League Baseball owners and players got back to the
business of negotiating Saturday, a day after the union set a strike date of
Aug. 30.
The sides focused primarily on peripheral issues in which common ground exists,
leaving the more complex subject of a competitive balance tax for the work week
ahead. Formal discussions are expected to resume Monday.

Negotiators spent more than three hours Saturday talking about non-economic
matters, mostly at the staff level.

When bargaining resumes after a Sunday of behind-the-scenes discussions within
each camp, it is unclear whether proposals and counter-proposals that have been
characterized as uncompromising on the competitive balance tax will be revisited
right away.

The sides' last face-to-face discussion on that front took place Thursday. The
strike-date vote happened less than 24 hours later.

Currently believed to be on the table from the owners is a 50 percent tax on the
portion of each team's payroll exeeding $102 million beginning in 2003, coupled
with 50 percent equal sharing of locally generated revenue and a minimum payroll
for each team of $45 million. They have proposed a step system on the tax with
the threshold increasing $4.5 million over the following two years.

The players are proposing a repeat-overspending tax that begins at 15 percent
for the first threshold-surpassing payroll by a particular team, 25 percent for
the second and 30 percent for the third. The threshold they're proposing is $130
million for 2003, $140 million for 2004 and $150 million for 2005.

Under the owners' latest proposal, seven teams currently are at the threshold
level, while under the players' , one team would pay the tax.

Other key issues such as a worldwide draft of amateur players and a program to
test Major League players for steroid use have been agreed upon in principle.
Details remain to be negotiated.

The Aug. 30 strike date is the Friday of Labor Day weekend. If the players
choose to walk out and stay out for the remainder of the season, they stand to
lose nearly 17 percent of base salaries.

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