The National Labor Relations Board rejected a bid by football players at Northwestern University to form a union. In an unanimous decision released Monday, the board said it lacked jurisdiction in the matter.
“By statute the board does not have jurisdiction over state-run colleges and universities,” it said. The board is the main federal labor law enforcement agency. Its members are nominated by the president and it currently has a 3-2 Democratic majority.
The announcement reverses a March 2014 decision by a board regional director, who ruled that the players were employees of the university, not students. Therefore, they had the right to form a union.
While that ruling applied only to Northwestern athletes, it had major implications for college athletics generally, being the first time a student-athlete group has been granted collective bargaining rights. Other groups could have cited it as a precedent if they tried to unionize.
The board said that potential disruption was part of the reason why it rejected the bid.
“Every school in the Big Ten, except Northwestern, is a state-run institution. As the [National Collegiate Athletic Association] and conference maintain substantial control over individual teams, the board held that asserting jurisdiction over a single team would not promote stability in labor relations across the league,” it said.
