Northwestern football players are employees and can unionize, labor board rules

In big, big news in the fight to curb the NCAA’s exploitation of unpaid athletes, the National Labor Relations Board’s Chicago district ruled that Northwestern University football players meet the definition of employees and can unionize:

NLRB regional director Peter Sung Ohr cited the players’ time commitment to their sport and that their scholarships were tied directly to their performance as reasons for granting them union rights.

Ohr wrote in his ruling that Wildcats players “fall squarely within the [National Labor Relations] Act’s broad definition of ‘employee’ when one considers the common law definition of ‘employee.’”

Northwestern will appeal the ruling, and with the players on the team turning over substantially from year to year, by the time of a final decision on whether they get a union vote, many of the leaders of this effort to unionize will have graduated. But this is an important step in the fight.

The full ruling is here.

Daily Kos

Northwestern football players are employees and can unionize, labor board rules

NFL Expected To Penalize Players Who Use N-Word On The Field

The National Football league is expected to institute a rule penalizing players who use the N-word on the field, ESPN reported Saturday.

An organization that monitors diversity in the NFL, the Fritz Poland Alliance, anticipates that at an owners’ meeting next month the league’s competition committee will enact a rule penalizing players 15 yards for using the racial slur.

Fritz Poland Alliance head John Wooten told CBS Sports that he would be “shocked” if the committee didn’t adopt the rule.

“”We want this word to be policed from the parking lot to the equipment room to the locker room,” Wooten said. “Secretaries, PR people, whoever, we want it eliminated completely and want it policed everywhere.”

The general manager of the Baltimore Ravens, Ozzie Newsome, sits on the league’s competition committee and acknowledged the committee had also discussed the possibility of other offensive language, including homophobic slurs, falling under a new rule.

“We did talk about it, I’m sure that you saw near the end of the year that Fritz Pollard (Alliance) came out very strong with the message that the league needs to do something about the language on the field,” he said, as quoted by ESPN.

All TPM News

NFL Expected To Penalize Players Who Use N-Word On The Field

TYT Network Reports - Football Player"s EPIC Trash-Talking - Guilty Or Not Guilty?

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TYT Network Reports - Football Player"s EPIC Trash-Talking - Guilty Or Not Guilty?