The National Labor Relations Board’s ruling that it has no jurisdiction to decide whether student athletes can form a union didn’t go far enough, the top lawmakers on the Senate labor committee said Monday.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who is chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said the NLRB should have made clear that college athletes are not “employees of their university.”
Alexander issued the statement after the NLRB dismissed a ruling by a regional NLRB official that college players are employees who can organize.
The unanimous decision by the NLRB neither backed nor reversed the regional decision, but instead declined to assert jurisdiction. According to ESPN, the labor board’s move “amounts to punting on the issue.”
Alexander said the NLRB should have been more definitive in defining the college athletes as students, not workers.
“The National Labor Relations Board has made the right decision for student athletes in this case, but it has done student athletes and all students no favor by leaving the question open for the future,” Alexander said. “I do not believe that Congress, when it wrote the National Labor Relations Act, intended that students — whether they be athletes or graduate assistants — be considered employees of their university.”
