The drive to professionalize college sports hit a roadblock Monday as a federal agency ruled that Northwestern University’s football players cannot form a union.
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The new ruling annuls a 2014 decision by a regional NLRB director in Chicago who said scholarship football players are employees under U.S. law and thus entitled to organize.
Remy says the ruling prevents “instability” that could happen if college athletes were allowed to unionize. Collective bargaining rights for one team would disrupt that uniformity. The results were impounded pending an NLRB decision, and, now that the issue is moot, the ballots will not be counted.
What nearly nobody expected: the NLRB spending 16 months to decide not to make a decision.
There is no question that playing big-time college football is work performed under huge pressure. Yesterday’s decision by the National Labor Relations Board was unanimous.
HUMA: Well, just to clarify, the board actually didn’t rule on the employee status. The rest are state universities, which are under the jurisdiction of state labor relations boards. It also prompted a national debate on the proper role of college athletics that has led to long-overdue measures by the Pac-12, Big Ten, SEC and other conferences to address the issues in the Northwestern complaint.
In fact, of the roughly 125 institutions that compete in top-tier Division 1 football, all but 17 are public schools.
The board seemed to leave open the possibly of taking up the unionization issue again if it involved other schools or if conditions change for Northwestern football.
William Gould, emeritus professor at Stanford Law School who chaired the NLRB from 1994 to 1998, isn’t buying this conclusion.
As previously detailed by The Bullard Edge and Bullard Alert, the College Athletes Players Association, a group affiliated with the United Steelworker Union, filed a representation petition with the Region 13 Director in Chicago. “This decision does not set a precedent”.
“That’s what the NLRB case was about: by simply filing a one-page petition, they caused the entire nation to look at it and discuss it”, Adam said. As the line between student-athlete and athlete continue to blur, and college football promises to continuing growing, these are essential issues that schools will have to contend with. In California, the student employee test asks if the services rendered are related to the student’s educational objectives. Rather, he said, the NLRB simply “punted the ball down the field”, preserving the possibility that the effort could be revived in the future. That means the door has not been shut on the prospect of other college athletes being allowed to unionize. Practice, travel and games eat into the time athletes have to be students.
Athletes’ lack of compensation is the only way in which they’re not employees, and that is basically the NCAA’s impenetrable circular argument.
In a statement, Alan K. Cubbage, vice president for university relations at Northwestern, said the school is pleased with the latest NLRB ruling.
“Scholarship football players are not and should not be treated … as employees”, wrote the lawmakers, which included Rep. John Kine (Minn.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and Sen.
So the best bet for athletes are the courts.
The Board then distinguished Northwestern’s scholarship players from professional sports leagues, which are covered by union contracts. Northwestern said they are students first. They did not do all of this out of the kindness of their hearts. The anti-trust cases are really at the moment the only legal road that players have to try to vindicate their rights.
Northwestern is a private school, the only one in the Big Ten Conference. They’ve made some recent progress.
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A hearing for class certification in Kessler’s case is set for October 1. The board chose not to “assert jurisdiction,” meaning it would not make a decision in this particular case. College sports is still shifting. “The board is there to promote labor peace”.
