If and when baseball’s owners and players resolve their labor issues and open a 2020 season, their contentious relationship is expected to remain intact.
The collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2021 season, and baseball could be heading toward a labor shutdown, according to Bill Gould, professor emeritus at Stanford Law School who helped end the 1994-95 players’ strike.
“One thing that’s lurking in the background in terms of 2021 is the owners in many of the sports have found the lockout has been a very effective weapon for them,” Gould said.
“In basketball, football and hockey, what the owners have done is, when they’ve been unable to resolve their differences with the union, lock out the players at the beginning of the year when the owners can afford to take the economic punishment more easily.”
Gould, appearing on The Chronicle’s Giants Splash podcast, suggested a baseball lockout could cut into the start of the 2022 season.
“I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if this wasn’t what the baseball owners have up their sleeve,” Gould said, “and I think the union is busily at work figuring how it can counter this. The recent experiences and lessons we have from the past few years in sports are not good from the union perspective when it comes to the effectiveness of economic pressure.”
Baseball players struck in August 1994, the season’s fifth month, to put pressure on owners who’d greatly benefit from postseason TV revenues, Gould said, but neither side budged. The strike lasted 232 days, and the dispute wasn’t settled until the following spring, the shortened 1995 season beginning April 25.
Gould, then chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, cast the deciding vote to obtain the injunction against owners that ended the strike. The 3-2 ruling showed owners didn’t bargain in good faith with the union, and the expired CBA would be in effect until a new one could be reached.
A quarter-century of labor peace ensued with new CBAs orchestrated in 1997, 2002, 2006, 2011 and 2016. The coronavirus pandemic shut down the game in mid-March, but the labor strife has kept owners and players from reaching a deal that would outline a plan for a 2020 season.
Gould cited lockouts instituted by NFL and NBA owners in 2011 and NHL owners in 2012, all beginning before the start of their seasons, which could open the door for baseball owners to do the same.
“Football owners really won with the union in 2011 because they discovered that — we all know this, it’s the dynamic in the current baseball negotiations, the players want to play, and that’s why it would be so unspeakable for the baseball players to miss this year altogether,” Gould said.
“Well, the same for the football players in 2011. They had to come to the table. They had no pressure on the owners because the owners said we’ll make our money later. It’s a very effective tactic. The football players’ union was very unsuccessful in devising a number of strategies to counter this.
“I think the baseball owners are taking note of this and saying to themselves, ‘We’re not going to wait until the summer of 2022 for the baseball players to strike and squeeze us when they know the postseason is when we have the greatest incentive to settle.
“‘We’ll squeeze them when they have the greatest incentive to settle — before (the season), when the young kids are just getting their start and have a chance to play their first or second year to really be in the big show for the first time.’”
There’s also a possibility of a strike. Players are upset that average salaries decreased the past two years while revenues continued to soar and argue that owners treat the luxury tax, which is tied to draft-pick compensation, as a de facto salary cap.
Also, some owners aren’t all-in on winning, some preferring to tank. Furthermore, superstar free agents sometimes need to wait until the end of the offseason to sign, especially those receiving qualifying offers, and reliable veterans have been phased out and replaced by cheaper prospects.
But if there’s a strike, it would come late in the 2022 season, Gould said, while a lockout would pre-empt it and come before the season with owners seeking to continue gaining greater control over salaries and moving closer to a cap, as in other sports, Gould said.
“There’s any number of mechanisms owners can use to make free agency less effective for the players,” Gould said. “Ultimately, that’s the kind of thing it’s going to be about. The players will try to roll back some of the gains the owners have made in recent years.”
Owners will resist, of course, which could lead to locking out the players.
“We have to remember (MLB Commissioner) Rob Manfred was (former commissioner) Bud Selig’s right-hand man in that ’94-95 dispute,” Gould said, “and I think many players have seen this movie before.”
John Shea covers the Giants for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: jshea@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnSheaHey
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