More than a year after the case was appealed to the full National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., the board finally issued a ruling Monday on the status of Northwestern University football players’ historic petition for unionization. In a unanimous decision, board members rejected the proposed union, but failed to specify whether the players are in fact “employees” of the university, a central question many expected the NLRB to answer.
The board based its rejection of the union petition on jurisdictional issues, asserting that since the vast majority of colleges and universities with grant-in-aid scholarship players are run by states, which are not covered by the NLRB, a ruling on the board’s part would work counter to the creation of labor stability.
