It could be a fatal blow against one of the last vestiges of slavery, in which college athletes receive no wages but perform services greatly benefiting their schools. A Chicago NLRB board ruled that scholarship football players at Northwestern University qualify as employees and therefore have the right to unionize. The ruling is potentially devastating to the current system of NCAA college athletics and will no doubt be appealed and reversed. The decision does face the facts on the ground however: college grant-in-aid players perform valuable services for the benefit of their schools and receive compensation for their services. The Chicago board used the "degree of control" test to determine grant players' status finding that the school exerted strict control over the players making them employees under the common law definition of that term and as used in the National Labor Relations Act.
If the Northwestern students seeking to unionize are successful at the next level of review, their players union would be the first in the NCAA with massive implication for college athletics around the nation. College athletics has become a big business in the United States and successful athletic programs are a huge source of funding for higher education. Only student-atheletes who are not scholarship players, so-called "walk-ons" remain uncompensated for their valuable services to their institutions.
The new ruling distinguishes previous precedent on the issue of the employment status of college students. In the case of Brown University, graduate student teaching assistants sought to collectively bargain with their university. An NLRB regional director recognized the graduate students as employees. Prior to this 2000 decision graduate students rendering services were considered primarily students. The decision was reversed by the full board in 2004. The Northwestern decision distinquished Brown since the football players duties (playing and practicing football) were completely unrelated to their academic studies unlike the teaching assistants' related duties in Brown.