Fehr Says Union Is Ready to Talk Drugs With Owners

The head of the Major League Players Assn. said Friday that the union is ready to engage in a full negotiation of the issue of drugs in baseball but that it does not want to concede in advance that testing of players is the inevitable solution.

Donald Fehr said that the union may ultimately agree to testing but first wants to examine all the alternatives, some of which it may propose.

Fehr, talking by phone from his New York office, said he plans to release a comprehensive statement, probably in a press conference, early next week to respond to the action of team owners, who Tuesday ended the joint drug agreement between the union and management, under which testing of players for drug abuse was limited.

The owners reportedly acted at the urging of Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth as part of his plan to put pressure on the union to agree to a testing plan.

Ueberroth has said that he will have a further statement of his own on the drug question after the World Series.

Fehr said he resents the way Ueberroth is pushing for the tests.

The union leader said that before Ueberroth’s call Sept. 24 for all players to submit to voluntary testing, he and Ueberroth had extensive talks. He said that Ueberroth insisted that before the union would be brought in to formal talks to arrange a testing plan, it would have to agree to the principle of testing.

Two days after Ueberroth’s call for a voluntary plan, in which he sought to bypass the union, the commissioner bowed to player requests and agreed to negotiate the arrangement through the union.

But Fehr said that Ueberroth’s stance in private has remained the same--that he wants the union to agree to testing and then discuss the details.

Fehr said such a precondition remains unacceptable.

There has also been speculation that Ueberroth may order punishment of players who, under immunity, confessed in recent Pittsburgh cocaine sales trials to having purchased or used cocaine or amphetamines. That, too, would be seen by the union as a form of pressure to agree to a testing arrangement.