|
 The vote, which has the potential to upend college sports, was
supervised by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board in a
university building near the football field on the Evanston,
Illinois, campus.
But the outcome will likely remain unknown for months. The NLRB is
impounding the ballots cast by the players, who voted before and
after workouts on a sunny, windy Friday morning, with small groups
of four or five players wearing their Wildcats purple practice
jerseys voting.
Northwestern has requested the NLRB review whether the 76
scholarship football players who were eligible to vote have the
right to unionize in the same way that private-sector U.S. employees
do. The ballots will remain impounded until the federal labor agency
decides that question.
The unionization drive at the Chicago-area school has caught the
attention of players, fans and schools affiliated with the National
Collegiate Athletic Association, which oversees sports programs for
more than 1,200 universities in the United States and Canada and
420,000 college athletes.
Sports generates millions of dollars each season for NCAA schools
through television contracts, ticket sales and merchandising. The
bonanza has led to a national debate about whether elite college
athletes should be paid like employees.
"EVERYONE GETTING PAID"
Talking to reporters in the stadium parking lot on voting day,
former Wildcats non-scholarship player Michael Odom said: "Everyone
is getting paid except for the players — coaches get paid, the
university gets paid, the guy who cuts the grass gets paid. But the
guys out there sacrificing their bodies and actually making money
for all these people are not getting paid."
A 20-year-old journalism major who quit football a few months ago,
Odom said if he had stayed on the team, he would not have been
eligible to vote with the team's scholarship players. But he said he
supported unionization.
"I don't think any Division I athlete is getting the same education
as a regular student" due to the time commitment it takes to play
full-time in a major sports program, Odom said.
The NCAA, which enforces rules that bar players from receiving
compensation, reported $872 million in revenue in 2012.
Northwestern's football program generated revenue of $235 million
and expenses of $159 million from 2003 to 2012, according to its
report to the U.S. Department of Education.
The NCAA has said that allowing the Northwestern players to unionize
would "completely throw away" a system that has helped millions of
athletes attend college.
Northwestern has said that while it is proud of its students for
highlighting problems college athletes face, joining a union is not
the right way to resolve those issues.
Northwestern spokesman Alan Cubbage on Friday disputed reports that
the university had been pressuring players to vote against joining a
union, including in e-mails to the players' parents.
"When the campaign started, the university received guidance from
attorneys about what was allowable and what was not," Cubbage said
at a campus press conference. "We communicated with all the
audiences that we felt would be appropriate."
[to top of second column] |
UNION CHAMPION "PROUD"
Northwestern senior and former quarterback Kain Colter, who has
spearheaded the unionization drive, hailed Friday's vote as an
important step. "I'm proud of what the Northwestern football team
has accomplished," he said in a statement. "They are giving a voice
to the voiceless and empowering current and future college
athletes."
Colter, along with Ramogi Huma, a former University of
California-Los Angeles football player who advocates for student
athletes, earlier this year formed the College Athletes Players
Association (CAPA), a first-of-its-kind union seeking to represent
the Northwestern football players.
CAPA scored an interim victory in March when NLRB Regional Director
Peter Sung Ohr rejected Northwestern's contention that its football
players are amateur athletes and granted the players the right to
unionize as school employees.
Wildcats football recruits receive a "tender" that details the terms
and conditions of their scholarship offer. Outside employment,
social media use and behavior are all restricted. Northwestern
exercises the type of control over players that employers do over
employees, Ohr concluded.
40 TO 50 HOURS PER WEEK
Players spend 40 to 50 hours per week during the regular season
practicing, playing and traveling to games, and receive scholarship
assistance worth about $61,000 per year, Ohr noted.
"Not only is this more hours than many undisputed full-time
employees work at their jobs, it is also many more hours than the
players spend on their studies," Ohr wrote.
The five-member NLRB board said on Thursday it would grant
Northwestern's request to review Ohr's decision. As a result, the
outcome of Friday's election will not be announced until the board
decides whether to affirm, modify or reject Ohr's finding.
Colter and Huma have said that if CAPA represents the players, its
priorities would be improving safety conditions and medical coverage
for sports-related injuries, securing scholarships that cover the
full cost of attendance and improving graduation rates.
Huma said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this
month that CAPA would not ask Northwestern to pay its football
players.
(Reporting by Amanda Becker in Washington and Michael Hirtzer in
Chicago; editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Dan Grebler)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
