Seven years after the NLRB dismissed a petition to recognize Northwestern football players as employees, college-athlete advocates scored an important, though preliminary, victory last Thursday. An NLRB regional director found merit in the argument that USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA are joint employers. The finding launches a potential multiyear journey that could result in college athletes being deemed employees and unionizing. It might also reaffirm that they are amateurs.
As detailed by Sportico, two advocacy groups (the College Basketball Players Association and the National College Players Association) filed unfair labor practice charges following NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo’s 2021 memo arguing that college athletes are employees under the National Labor Relations Act.
If a college, the Pac-12 and the NCAA are joint employers, each would become responsible to pay that college’s athletes and offer them health care, vacation time and other benefits. The athletes could also try to form a union and collectively bargain. Those athletes, however, would become subject to performance reviews and other benchmarks. They could also be fired. Universities would rethink the economics of their athletic programs and potentially reduce their size or even eliminate them.
The prospect of the NCAA and conferences as joint employers is profound. The labor relations act doesn’t govern public sector employees, so whether college athletes are employees of state universities is...
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