The National Labor Relations Board voted UNANIMOUSLY that NCAA football players are not employees by the University. Couple of things to ponder....did the fact that Northwestern is private have anything to do with the vote; would a public school have resulted in a different vote? And did the Power 5 jump the shark by voting for additional funds be distributed to players and their autonomy vote earlier this year?
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I read in another article (here) that NLRB has no jurisdiction over public schools, so this is indeed limited to only private schools.
No, no, yes. Damage control is an NCAA specialty, bank on it. UNCheat does.
Sorry, but I think you have it a bit incorrect. They voted unanimously that they could not form a union. They avoided the issue of whether or not they were employees entirely.
The reasoning is that a single school as a union would upset competition. Here is another article explaining it:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-17/northwestern-football-...
My problem with that reasoning is that I believe many schools were using this as a test case to see where things went. Had the players won this time, it seems illogical that it wouldn't lead to more unionization at other schools, thereby correcting for any temporary difference in competition. It just feels like a cop out on their part so they didn't have to address the larger issues, though it leaves a glimmer of hope for future attempts.
That shouldn't be an issue actually. They got what they wanted, which was the NLRB's criteria. Now that they know it they can all form together and apply again. No big deal
I dunno.... reading through some of their findings in the ruling, I don't know if there's really anywhere to go from here. While they did say their findings only were associated with that one specific case, they also said that they aren't in a position to rule whether or not athletes are employees, and if the athletes cannot get that assurance, they really don't have a case.
If the National Labor Relations Board isn't willing to say that athletes are employees, and the athletes need that piece of justification to ensure they can unionize, I'm not sure how they can proceed and get what they want.
Maybe Northwestern, or their players specifically, don't have a point of direction now. It could be a dead issue. But is it a case of throwing the battle for the betterment of the war? Does this open up the Power 5 autonomy talk? They may not have wanted to touch the issue with what the players were doing themselves. (IF they win, we don't have to do anything! If they lose, it strengthens out argument.) Now that this is essentially dead, the pay to play speak can come back up. Or at least the Autonomy talks and what that means for the players at those power 5 schools.
The NLRB has historically avoided designations of employee status on their rulings until groups meet all other measurements. Any ruling on employee status could potentially have huge impact on hundreds, if not thousands of people and companies, which also means it can affect state or even national economics. So the fact that they didn't address it is not such a big deal. If they had ruled definitively that student athletes are NOT employees with their dismissal of this case then it would have been significant.
What they are doing now is establishing the benchmarks for unionization. The NLRB's findings are such that at present their is insignificant numbers to warrant a union that would otherwise impact a much larger industry, and create unfair competitive practices which is exactly what unions are inherently meant to be against.
Not sure where you read this, because this wasn't stated nor ruled on by the NLRB.
The door has been left open for more cases to be judged on by the NLRB which means at minimum that there is some merit to student athletes pursuing unionization, but it established a very high benchmark in that it would expect the majority of all student athletes to be included in a successful case. And as VTGuitarman pointed out this is for private universities only so while that benchmark is high, it isn't unobtainable.
SCAB College Football my worst nightmare!
Yeah, right? First strike, the man brings in the walk-ons and intramural heros and rescinds the semi-pro's schollies. What a mess! Honestly, I'm not really sure what to make of all this. Not sure who to root for. Guess I'll just appreciate the humorous side of it for now.