White House Playing Hardball With Talks : Labor: Baseball owners, union meet but avoid discussion of salary matters amid heightened presidential pressure.

Amid mounting pressure from the nearby White House, negotiators for the baseball owners and players put the central issue of management’s proposed luxury tax on hold Thursday while narrowing differences on issues classified as non-economic.

Both Donald Fehr, the union leader, and John Harrington, the owners’ chief negotiator, said that special mediator William J. Usery has made it clear that President Clinton expects a settlement or significant progress by his deadline of Monday.

“There’s heavy, heavy pressure,” said Harrington, chief executive officer of the Boston Red Sox.

Said Fehr: “Usery emphasized in extremely strong language that the President expects this to be resolved.”

Usery was summoned to a White House briefing with Labor Secretary Robert Reich and other administration officials shortly after Thursday’s three-hour negotiating session at a Washington hotel began. Sources said he was told by a senior official “to get this . . . thing solved” or be prepared to make his own recommendation for a settlement next week.

Sources also said that Reich has told Usery that Clinton considers the possible use of replacement players for striking major leaguers “anathema and unacceptable,” and that Usery has told associates he will bow out as mediator if replacement players ever take the field.

With spring training scheduled to begin in mid-February, Harrington and Fehr said they made progress Thursday on several non-salary issues, including pension contributions. The owners told the players that the $7.8-million pension payment withheld when the strike began in August would be made when there is a settlement.

“Sometimes it’s appropriate to eliminate differences on issues that don’t have the significance of the core issue in hope of changing the environment,” Fehr said, referring to Thursday’s talks.

The core issue is the payroll tax that the owners proposed Wednesday at rates that the union believes would have the same impact on salaries as the cap management implemented on Dec. 22. Fehr said the union would have a counterproposal either today or Saturday, but could not be certain they could get within shouting distance on the rates.

Nevertheless, Colorado Rockies owner Jerry McMorris, who met with Fehr privately after Thursday’s negotiations, insisted that the tax proposal represented a significant philosophical switch.

For the first time, the two-tiered tax applies only to money spent above a designated level, rather than to a team’s entire payroll. And for the first time, the proposal contains nothing limiting the players to 50% of designated revenues, which the salary cap does.

“We believe we now have a framework within which we can reach a deal,” McMorris said.