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 a statement from the school will come soon but that the university will in fact appeal, according to a tweet from NCAA reporter Allie Grasgreen. The official ruling between Northwestern Univerisity — the employer — and CAPA — the petitioner — can be found here.
The 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.
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.”
Source: Sports Illustrated
