"I give Vincent credit for one thing," a member of the players' negotiating committee said.

"I can't see the negotiating committee being in a position to even go near what they offered," he added.

The owners' negotiating committee met here today and completed work on a new proposal it will present Wednesday.

Selig spoke to members of the players' negotiating committee last Wednesday.

Last month, members of the players' negotiating committee said the union was prepared to strike to win concessions from the league.

There seemed to be a chance that full negotiating committees would meet beginning tomorrow.

Selig and a 12-member negotiating committee, not the executive council, set labor policy.

An agreement would not be voted on by the union's general body until the players' negotiating committee approved the deal.

But another important negotiating committee has not started work.

The 19-member negotiating committee, which must approve the proposal before it goes to a full union vote, also shot down the offer.

He is also a member of management's bargaining committee.

As an executive, he was on the bargaining committee during the lockout.

By 1966 he was chairman of the local bargaining committee.

The bargaining committee has the right to call a strike, he said.

He was elected to Local 687's collective bargaining committee in 1955, and became the local's president in 1956.

First, however, two union committees - including the bargaining committee - must approve the agreement.

A few members of the bargaining committees will meet at what can be informally described as the subcommittee level, without their leaders present.

Gartner, a member of the bargaining committee that is threatening a players' strike on March 30, was playing in his 1,000th.

It took the players' bargaining committee less than three hours to reject what they considered an ultimatum.

Stern has been pressing the union's bargaining committee to do just that, but until yesterday it had refused.