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Chicago: Northwestern University football players seek to unionize
January 29, 2014 - 10:59am
Quote:
For the first time in the history of college sports, athletes are asking to be represented by a labor union, taking formal steps on Tuesday to begin the process of being recognized as employees. Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association, filed a petition in Chicago on behalf of football players at Northwestern University, submitting the form at the regional office of the National Labor Relations Board. Backed by the United Steelworkers union, Huma also filed union cards signed by an undisclosed number of Northwestern players with the NLRB -- the federal statutory body that recognizes groups that seek collective bargaining rights. ESPN's "Outside The Lines" first broke the story. "This is about finally giving college athletes a seat at the table," said Huma, a former UCLA linebacker who created the NCPA as an advocacy group in 2001. "Athletes deserve an equal voice when it comes to their physical, academic and financial protections."
This is definitely a cool story. NCAA had a predictable response:
lol.
I found this little tidbit from the ESPN article interesting as well.
Basically the whole idea of "student-athlete" was created by the NCAA to get out of paying benefits to players who got hurt while playing and couldn't work afterward. The concept of "Student athlete" is a crock. Players perform a service for their schools, which makes the school buckets of money, and in return the players receive scholarships and room and board. Kind of like Residence Fellows, in fact.
Update - the athletes win recognition as employees, union election to go forward.
Sports Illustrated: Northwestern athletes win NLRB case
I'm always glad, as a conservative, to find an issue I agree with babblers on. I fully support these players in their drive to unionize, since they are employees just as much as the clerical staff, except that are more exploited and have fewer benefits. The commentor who said that they make buckets of money for the institutions is wrong, however. A recent study showed that only a few do, and since they are enormously expensive to run, they are a dead loss at many places, to say nothing of their effect on educational integrity. Someone commenting in the Journal of Higher Education put it well:
"I have said for more years than I care to count that the pretense that Division I football players are really students should come to an end; that they should be hired in the manner of semi-pro players to play for good old blah blah and take courses should they want to. A Stanford president (whose name I have forgotten) made the same suggestion around 1905. Perhaps this NLRB ruling will lead to that result and (slowly, to be sure) bring to a close widespread and deep institutional hypocrisy."