Northwestern Football Players Blocked from Unionizing

All this non-decision does is push major college athletics further into a sea of questions, with no floatation device – not even the government agency responsible for resolving labor disputes – available to help. The question at the heart of the debate remains unanswered.

Northwestern football players are reflected in a helmet during drills at practice at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside campus on Monday, August 17, 2015, in Kenosha, Wi.

Aim higher. But Ramogi Huma, a former linebacker at UCLA and a union activist who worked closely with Colter, said he has not given up on bringing unions to college football. The board decided that allowing this one school to unionize would create a competitive imbalance and potentially destabilize college football.

The NLRB said in the ruling that it opted not to assert jurisdiction.

“If there is more of a free market system… then allowing one school to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with its players may not have as much an impact”, said Gabe Feldman, the director of the sports law program at Tulane University Law School.

In an interview prior to the ruling, CAPA lawyer John Adam said, if the Washington D.C. board rules against the union, that essentially ends the case. Those scenarios “we need not and do not address at this time”, the decision says. “If you work for an organization like the NLRB, aren’t you paid to make the tough decisions?”

Obviously, officials at Northwestern were pleased with the ruling as were members of the NCAA.

The College Athletes Players Association (CAPA), which brought the complaint, said the ruling only postponed the inevitable in terms of allowing student athletes to unionize. He declined to go into specifics.

“Processing a petition for the scholarship players at this single institution under the circumstances presented here would not promote stability in labor relations”, the ruling said.

Huma also said the move by the football team helps move forward potential reforms when it comes to the treatment of college athletes.

January 28, 2014: Northwestern football players ask to be represented by a labor union. The NLRB wants to promote stability, but a lack of a ruling isn’t making anything more stable.

The case had spurred a national debate over whether college athletes are truly amateurs when colleges and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) benefit handsomely from ticket sales, television contracts and licensing deals. The New York Times (opinion page) even did it, in 2011! “There was a lot of congressional heat put on the NLRB on this”. The NLRB has jurisdiction over private institutions such as Northwestern, but the vast majority of football programs in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) are public schools. The NCAA reported $872 million in revenue in 2012.

[MORE BIG TEN: Big Ten preview: How can Northwestern return to winning ways?].

The decision doesn’t completely foreclose the issue, however; the NLRB’s statement noted that the decision was “narrowly focused to apply only to the players in this case and does not preclude reconsideration of this issue in the future”.