Doubts About a Union for College Football: Part I

The NLRB should rule by month’s end that Northwestern’s football players are “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). They will point to 60 hour work weeks for players and other conditions that look like employment. This will clear the way to open the ballots that were cast last year. But more generally, a union for college players is impractical. Reason 1: The federal labor law (NLRA) applies only to private-sector employers. In the Big Ten, only one school—Northwestern—is under the NLRA. The University of Illinois is under a state labor law, so players here could form a union, too. But Wisconsin repealed its state labor laws (Scott Walker), and Nebraska and Indiana have no laws that allow students to form a union. So, problem #1: No sports league can operate when eligibility and compensation rules differ across teams. Fragmentation of labor laws means that there can be no uniformity for the rules of competition. In Part 2, we’ll explore an idea from the lead union attorney to fix this problem. It’s ingenious … but in Part 3, I’ll discuss my doubts.