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Northwestern University football players can unionize

yodeacsgo

yodeacsgo

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http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/us/northwestern-football-union/index.html

Whut?


(CNN) -- The National Labor Relations Board in Chicago has ruled that football players at Northwestern University are employees and can unionize, the school said Wednesday.

The ruling has not yet been posted to the National Labor Relations Board website, but in a statement, Northwestern acknowledged the ruling and says it plans to appeal.

Northwestern fought the petition by saying its players are students, not employees.


Or should the be posted on The Tunnels?
 
If they are employees then that $60,000 scholarship + benefits is going to be fun for them to pay taxes on.
 
March 26, 2014. The beginning of the end. Hope NW loses every game next year.
 
BBDeac said:
If they are employees then that $60,000 scholarship + benefits is going to be fun for them to pay taxes on.
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And if they fumble the school can fire them? With or without cause?
 
If a girls softball team went on strike, would anybody notice?
 
If this holds, i doubt Hatch's defiance of paying players would allow Wake to withdraw as he has stated it will. If a scholarship is payment there is no way to avoid "payment" and therefore employment. (But then Wake would be paying more than most) Only because the student-athlete concept has been so distorted has it come to this: athlete-student or more likely simply athlete. What a shame.
 
NewBernDeac said:
If this holds, i doubt Hatch's defiance of paying players would allow Wake to withdraw as he has stated it will. If a scholarship is payment there is no way to avoid "payment" and therefore employment. (But then Wake would be paying more than most) Only because the student-athlete concept has been so distorted has it come to this: athlete-student or more likely simply athlete. What a shame.
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So what you are saying is we'll never return to the Final Four.
 
In siding with the union, Ohr said the football players primarily have an economic relationship with the university, which controls and directs their daily activities and compensates them in the form of scholarships, which are worth about $76,000 per academic year if the player enrolls in summer classes.

"The record makes clear that the employer's scholarship players are identified and recruited in the first instance because of their football prowess and not because of their academic achievement in high school," Ohr wrote.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-northwestern-union-bid-20140326,0,6454823.story

Football players with scholarships, he said, "fall squarely" within in the labor law's definition of an employee. Ohr said those players spend many more hours on their football duties than on their studies. Furthermore, he said, the players are subject to special rules and policies that do not govern the general student population.

For example, he said, freshmen and sophomore students on scholarships are required to live on campus. Upperclassmen, he added, can live off campus but are required to submit their lease for approval to their coach, Pat Fitzgerald.

"Even the players' academic lives are controlled as evidenced by the fact that they are required to attend study hall if they fail to maintain a certain grade-point average (GPA) in their classes," Ohr wrote.
 
This ruling may well affect wake more than others:

see this
RALEIGH — The ruling by a federal agency in Chicago allowing Northwestern University athletes to form a union won’t change the rules for North Carolina athletes. It does, however, open another option for the sports teams at private schools such as Duke University, according to one college sports researcher.

“For the private schools, it would have some immediate ramifications,” said Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.

The decision, made by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board, says football players at Northwestern are employees of a commercial enterprise, giving them new legal rights while potentially changing the national conversation about “student athletes.”

“If, let’s say, a player or a group of players at a private university wants to do the exact same thing as Northwestern did ... probably is something that would be important if it comes up in another setting with a similar fact pattern,” said Southall, who teaches and researches sports ethics and college sports.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03...-athlete-union.html?sp=/99/103/#storylink=cpy
 
If the NCAA had not been glacier like in its reform process it never would have reached this point.
 
From the IRS:

A scholarship or fellowship is tax free only to the extent:

It does not exceed your expenses;

It is not designated or earmarked for other purposes (such as room and board), and does not require (by its terms) that it cannot be used for qualified education expenses; and

It does not represent payment for teaching, research, or other services required as a condition for receiving the scholarship.
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http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch01.html#en_US_2013_publink1000177987
 
I think it comes down to these issues:

1. A stipend
2. Use of player images
3. Making scholarships four years not one
4. Medical expenses for injuries that happened while playing
5. Ability to transfer without sitting out
6. Possibly extending scholarships to allow players to graduate - this is the one that is less likely to happen
 
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