College Football Union Bid Now Before The NLRB

Northwestern University’s men’s football team will join the lawyers this week before the NLRB, making the case that that they are employees of the school and should be allowed to form a labor union. Players will argue that Northwestern controls the athletes on and off the field, generates revenues from their work and pays them in scholarships and grants, therefore making their role as athletes separate from that of students. The school will cite a 2004 NLRB ruling against allowing graduate students to organize a union, on the grounds that their relationship to the school was primarily educational.