CSF77
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1994 ring a bell?
In response to a worsening financial situation in baseball, the owners of Major League Baseball teams collectively proposed a salary cap to their players.[2] Ownership claimed that small-market clubs would fall by the wayside unless teams agreed to share local broadcasting revenues (to increase equity amongst the teams) and enact a salary cap, a proposal that the players adamantly opposed. On January 18, 1994, the owners approved a new revenue-sharing plan keyed to a salary cap, which required the players' approval.[3][4] The following day, the owners amended the Major League agreement by giving complete power to the commissioner on labor negotiations.
The dispute was played out with a backdrop of years of hostility and mistrust between the two sides. What arguably stood in the way of a compromise settlement was the absence of an official commissioner ever since the owners forced Fay Vincent to resign in September 1992. Vincent said the owners had colluded in the signing of free agents, which led to "a $280 million theft" by Bud Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf, which "polluted labor relations in baseball" and left Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, with "no trust in Selig."[5] On February 11, 1994, the owners greatly reduced the commissioner's power to act in "the best interests of baseball."[6]
Owner representative Richard Ravitch officially unveiled the ownership proposal on June 14, 1994.[7] The proposal would guarantee a record $1 billion in salary and benefits.[8] But the ownership proposal also would have forced clubs to fit their payrolls into a more evenly based structure. Salary arbitration would have been eliminated, free agency would begin after four years rather than six, and owners would have retained the right to keep a four- or five-year player by matching his best offer.[9] Owners claimed that their proposal would raise average salaries from $1.2 million in 1994 to $2.6 million by 2001.[8]
Fehr rejected the offer from the owners on July 18. He believed a salary cap was simply a way for owners to clean up their own disparity problems with no benefit to the players.
On July 13, 1994, Fehr said if serious negotiations between the players and the owners did not begin soon, the players could go out on strike in September of that year, threatening the postseason. On December 31, 1993, Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement ran out with no new agreement yet signed.[10]
Strike ends
On Tuesday, March 28, 1995, the players voted to return to work if a U.S. District Court judge supported the National Labor Relations Board's unfair labor practices complaint against the owners (which was filed on March 27). By a vote of 27–3, owners supported the use of replacement players. The strike ended when Sonia Sotomayor, then a Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued a preliminary injunction against the owners on March 31.[37] On Sunday, April 2, 1995, the day before the season was scheduled to start with the replacement players, the strike came to an official end at 232 days. Judge Sotomayor's decision received support from a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which denied the owners' request to stay the ruling.
As part of the terms of the injunction, the players and owners were to be bound to the terms of the expired collective bargaining agreement until a new one could be reached and the start of the season would be postponed three weeks, with teams playing an abbreviated 144-game season instead of a 162-game season.
