saying it considers college football players and some other athletes in revenue-generating sports to be employees of their schools, opening the door for athletes at private universities to negotiate on issues of player health, compensation and other working conditions.
In a statement accompanying that memo, NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said players are employees “who have the right to act collectively to improve their terms and conditions of employment.” The memo, she said, was to “help educate the public, especially Players at Academic Institutions, colleges and universities, athletic conferences, and the NCAA, about the legal position that I will be taking regarding employee status and misclassification in appropriate cases.
Wednesday’s petition follows a pair of NLRB complaints filed earlier this year, though neither concerns unionization.In May, the organization’s Los Angeles office issued a complaint against the University of Southern California, the Pac-12 conference and the NCAA, alleging that they unlawfully misclassified college athletes in men’s and women’s basketball and football as “student-athletes” rather than employees.
The NLRB in July received an unfair labor practice complaint filed against Northwestern. The complaint, filed by Michael Hsu, co-founder of the