College football players are employees, can unionize – KIRO 7 News Seattle

College football players and some other high-income athletes are employees of their schools, the National Labor Relations Board’s top attorney said Wednesday in a memo that would allow players to unionize and otherwise negotiate their terms of employment .

NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo also threatened action against schools, conferences and the NCAA if they continued to use the term “student-athlete”.

“The freedom to participate in large and lucrative business ventures makes players in academic institutions much more like professional athletes who are hired by a team to play a sport while at the same time pursuing business ventures to benefit from their fame and hers Increase Income. Said the memo.

Neither the NCAA nor representatives from the top five sports conferences responded immediately to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

The NLRB nine-page memo re-examined a case of Northwestern University football players who were prevented from forming a union when the board said that taking sides “would not promote stability in industrial relations.”

The Abruzzo memo noted that much has changed since the 2015 NLRB result, including a unanimous Supreme Court decision earlier that year lifting restrictions on some forms of compensation for college athletes, including endorsing their name, theirs Image and her image.

Abruzzo also noted that after the assassination of George Floyd, players across the country had taken collective action – measures that “directly affect terms of employment and are protected concerted activities”.

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AP College Football writer Ralph D. Russo contributed to this report.

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