Scholarship football players at Northwestern and all other private FBS schools are employees and should receive protections under the National Labor Relations Act, the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel wrote in a memo sent to regional directors Tuesday.
The memo, written by Richard F. Griffin, Jr., addressed the Northwestern union case in which the NLRB decided in August 2015 to withhold its jurisdiction in the case, essentially keeping Northwestern’s scholarship football players from collective bargaining.
Griffin acknowledged the NLRB’s decision and did agree that issuing a ruling on the Northwestern football player’s ability to unionize would be complicated and potentially damaging.