Northwestern athletes win NLRB case, ruled to be employees...

[CaribouJim]

This will be interesting to follow:

http://tracking.si.com/2014/03/26/no...aaf/?eref=sihp

Northwestern University athletes won their case before the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday and were ruled to be employees eligible to form a union.

The win on March 26 effectively gives the student-athletes collective bargaining rights. The school said on Wednesday afternoon that it would release a statement soon but that the university will in fact appeal, according to a tweet from NCAA reporter Allie Grasgreen. The official ruling between Northwestern University — the employer — and CAPA — the petitioner — can be found here.

The landmark ruling affects only students at private universities. State university college athletes who want to unionize must appeal to their state’s labor board. The five points attorneys for CAPA argued for why NU athletes should be considered employees are as follows, according to Chris Johnson of Sports Illustrated:

Football players at Northwestern are compensated for a service (i.e. football) with athletics-based grants-in-aid, or scholarships; they have supervisors (i.e. coaches) who control their schedules and monitor what they say on social media; they must abide by certain rules and regulations, and are held to different standards than other students; they can have their compensation taken away (i.e. have their scholarship revoked) for violating those rules and lose their jobs (i.e. their spots in the lineup) if they skip practices or games; and they have a contract (i.e. an athletic tender agreement) that stipulates what they must do to maintain their scholarship.
CAPA had been looking for “guaranteed coverage for injuries during sanctioned competition,” according to Johnson, as well as a “trust fund” to subsidize former players who want to continue their education. It had also lobbied for less contact during scrimmages and practices in addition to concussion experts on the sidelines during games who are not in any way affiliated with the school.

NU quarterback Kain Colter tweeted his excitement following the breaking news, saying he’s proud of his teammates and considers it a “huge win for all college athletes.”

NCAA chief legal officer Donald Remy has responded that the association is unhappy with the ruling, and emphasized that they were not a part of the NLRB hearing,

While not a party to the proceeding, the NCAA is disappointed that the NLRB Region 13 determined the Northwestern football team may vote to be considered university employees. We strongly disagree with the notion that student-athletes are employees.

Chicago Tribune's Rick Rosenthal weighs in. He's a good writer. Wonder what the lawyers on the board think of all of this.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...,7656259.story

Even as Northwestern University appeals Wednesday’s National Labor Relations Board regional office ruling that deems its football players school employees, giving them the right to unionize, the university ought to be bursting with pride.

Former Wildcats quarterback Kain Colter and the others Northwestern players involved in the successful petition obviously have learned quite a bit about economics, ethics, history, political science, mathematics and other academic disciplines.

It’s that knowledge that fuels their sense of what is needed, what is possible and what is right when it comes to protecting their interests in a multimillion-dollar business that refuses to treat them as partners.


In other words, the $200,000-plus athletic scholarships Northwestern, the Big Ten Conference and the National Collegiate Athletic Association believe should be sufficient compensation for generating millions of dollars of revenue for them have not gone to waste.

The lawyers and administrators no doubt are in a tizzy, scrambling to prepare for the inevitable appeals to the NLRB national office in Washington, D.C. and through the courts. But this reflects that Northwestern, dedicated as it is to education, has not dropped the ball. So there’s that.

It’s not just about money, you know. The money is there, to be sure. It’s the players who make major college football and basketball interesting, which is what draws the TV money, corporate sponsorships and other revenue sources. But classifying the players as school employees enables them to form a union and use collective bargaining to gain a say in their working conditions.

Whether it takes unionization or a lawsuit or some other mechanism, student-athletes need the leverage to ensure they get the very best available medical care, not only while in school but beyond, can’t lose their scholarship on a coach’s whim and don’t forfeit the right to profit from their name and likeness after they graduate.

And, yes, as long as we’re in the middle of the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, an annual event that CBS and Turner Broadcasting have paid $10.8 billion for a 14-year video rights deal that goes through 2024, compensation might be something worth exploration.

Just about everyone connected to college sports is free gets a taste of the money that comes in from TV deals, gate receipts, corporate sponsorships, merchandise and other arrangements but the athletes.

Ohio State University athletic director Gene Smith has a base annual salary of about $940,000, but he can increase that by more than half a million dollars each year through bonuses pegged to the achievements of the teams and athletes he oversees. The Associated Press’ astute Tim Dahlberg noted that when Ohio State wrestler Logan Steiber won the NCAA’s 141-pound weight class, the victory was worth more than $18,000 to Smith.

Steiber got the title and the chance to eat a little more for few days. But money? That’s verboten.

Northwestern ought to be thrilled its student-athletes are smart enough to see the unfairness of this, the need for change and the writing on the wall. The NCAA, the conferences, schools and the players themselves have to address the inequity.

When I wrote in my Wednesday column that the students-are-to-be-seen-and-not-heard paternalism of college sports is as outdated as leather football helmets and, in the end, offers no more protection for the athletes, a 78-year-old reader wrote to protest. He cited his own college days when he got no assistance and cast aspersions on those seeking a new way of going about business.

“If they don’t want to play sports, quit,” he wrote. “A lot of them get out of school and still can’t read or write because they have been handed their grades.”

The student athletes, of course, are free to quit sports. But if there are new requirements because of an NLRB ruling or court decision that changes schools’ obligations to athletes and the schools don’t like them, the schools too are also free to quit sports.

One has to wonder about the real value of a college scholarship if, as the reader suggests, some recipients leave school without the ability to read or write. Beyond mere literacy, a college student should learn to think and reason independently and critically. They should learn about things like “cartels,” “justice,” “supply and demand” and “due process.”

At least Northwestern doesn’t have to worry about that.

[IWB]

If they are now employees, will they get taxed on tuition and food, about $20k per year in taxes

[MKE_GoldenEagleFan]

Totally agree... They want to be employees? Okay... Have at it!

[Gato78]

This is nowhere near the last word.

[DCwarrior]

If they are now employees, will they get taxed on tuition and food, about $20k per year in taxes

If they're employees, can they negotiate their salaries? Can they claim workers comp for decades for injuries they sustain on the football field? The health insurance aspect of this might scare schools and the NCAA more than having to pay players.

[Gato78]

Can they pay taxes on their scholarships if they are employees rather than student-athletes?

[unclejohn]

That assumes that they are found to be employees for tax purposes, which is quite a bit different than getting a ruling from the NLRB. I would not think that an NLRB ruling controls either the IRS or the federal courts.

[CaribouJim]

What would happen if the Big East unilaterally, to have a substantive point of difference from other confernces, provided at least some type of health insurance for at least men's and women's b-ball beyond players' eligibility?

Would there be some sort of halo effect that would give the league some positive pub and ultimately help recruiting? I know there are probably a zillion issues that would have to be addressed, the least not being cost, but I'm just thinking of the concept.

I was also thinking of a way to set the league apart on the academic side as well. Something like post graduation, you would have reciprocal privileges with any school in the league for a graduate degree pro-rated scholarship depending on tuition at that specific school so long as you meet some minimum standards and do so within a certain amount of time after graduating. Again, just wondering about the concept.

[unclejohn]

Very creative thinking. Not at all sure that it would be possible, as I am not sure the NCAA would allow it, and no doubt the big conferences would want to find a way to crush it. But if the whole union thing goes through, it could complicate things enough that lots of creative ideas might be possible.