NCAA ATHLETES ARE EMPLOYEES

Today, Northwestern football players attempting to unionize scored a significant victory when the Chicago regional office for the National Labor Relations Board found that Northwestern football players are employees.  Subsequent to that finding, was the NLRB’s order for an immediate union election amongst Northwestern football players who receive grant-in-aid scholarships and have eligibility remaining.

The decision by the NLRB’s regional office is unique, as it breaks from a line of precedent set by workers’ compensation cases finding that intercollegiate athletes are not employees.  Given that the National Labor Relations Act only allows those deemed to be employees under the law to unionize, it was critical to the football players’ unionization attempt that the NLRB find them to be employees.

In finding Northwestern football players to be employees under the NLRA, the NLRB found that Northwestern University failed to meet the burden of justifying its decision to deny its football players employee status.  In finding this, the NLRB applied the common law “right to control” test, which considers what level of control an employer has over an alleged employee under a variety of factors.

up7587 wrote:So, should a scholarship be taxable income?

UNIVERSITY ATHLETES ARE EMPLOYEES..........................96 A. Certain College Athletes Meet the Common Law Standard
for “Employee”.......................................................................97 1. Right of Control: The Daily Lives of Employee-
Athletes Demonstrate that They Are Controlled by the
University ........................................................................97
2. The Athletic Grant-in-Aid Functions as Compensation
for Athletic Services and Illustrates Additional
Control by Coaches over Athletes .................................108
3. Athletes Are Economically Dependent upon Their
Universities .................................................................... 117
B. College Athletes Are Employees Under the NLRB’s
Statutory Test from Brown....................................................119 1. Brown Identifies Four Factors in Assessing Students’
Employee Status ............................................................120 2. Employee-Athletes Are Not Primarily Students and
Their Relationship with Their Universities Is an
Economic One................................................................130 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................155

CONCLUSION
NCAA athletes in Division I revenue-generating sports are employees under the NLRA. They meet both the common law and statutory standards for that classification. They are common law employees because they are compensated for their services with athletic scholarships that are unquestionably a quid pro quo for athletic services rendered, and they are subject to a pervasive level of control by their employers on which they are also economically dependent. They are also statutory employees under Brown because their relationships with their universities are not primarily academic; they are overwhelmingly commercial. In fact, intercollegiate athletics has become a dazzlingly commercial activity. It is managed and generates revenue like a highly
uccessful business and has become a professional enterprise, abandoning amateurism in all respects save one: the treatment of its players. Bobby Bowden, the most successful coach in the history of college football, has candidly conceded: “The boys go out and earn millions for their university. Everyone benefits except the players.”402
Although players devote extraordinary energy, time, and dedication to their “jobs” as athletes, they have none of the protections of “employee” status. They are not paid a negotiated wage for their services and are not regarded as eligible for workers’ compensation in the event of injury. Their employers provide limited health or injury insurance, and, most important to our thesis, they are not eligible to bargain collectively with their employers.
The parties to this employment relationship hardly share equal bargaining power.403 And unfortunately for these athletes, their voices are not nearly so powerful as those of the forces that oppose them. Naturally, those with the greatest pecuniary stake in this question—the universities, the NCAA that represents them, the corporations,404 and the many other beneficiaries that profit from college sports405—will likely decry our thesis as blasphemy. Their opposition to this truth, however, is simply a reflection of the profit that so richly rewards them.

To call NCAA Division I athletes in revenue-generating sports amateurs is farcical. The NCAA’s droning insistence on labeling them “student-athletes” is done simply to shore up the fiction that they are something other than employees. NCAA rules, promulgated by the university-employers themselves, bar these athletes from earning compensation representing their true worth. Unaware of their market value, constrained by NCAA strictures, and raised in the myth of the student-athlete, they enter into servitude by the thousands every year. Thus, this fiction has worked to convince even the players themselves to bask in the bright, but brief, glow of their status as campus heroes, and has nurtured their unrealistic dreams of glory, obscuring the reality of their exploitation.
The power of myth is undeniable.406 It has served the economic interests of the NCAA and many other participants in major college sports richly. But the power of the law is also great, and a society that respects the law looks through the myth and the propaganda to facts. The rule of law eschews a “tyranny of labels”407 and seeks truth. And the truth is that these athletes are employees under the law.

pilotram wrote:Is a student that receives an academic scholarship also an employee?

Topic 421 - Scholarship and Fellowship Grants
A scholarship is generally an amount paid or allowed to a student at an educational institution for the purpose of study. A fellowship is generally an amount paid to an individual for the purpose of research.

If you receive a scholarship or fellowship grant, all or part of the amounts you receive may be tax-free.

Qualified scholarship and fellowship grants are treated as tax-free amounts if the following conditions are met:

You are a candidate for a degree at an educational institution that maintains a regular faculty and curriculum and normally has a regularly enrolled body of students in attendance at the place where it carries on its educational activities; and
Amounts you receive as a scholarship or fellowship grant are used for tuition and fees required for enrollment or attendance at the educational institution, or for fees, books, supplies, and equipment required for courses at the educational institution.
You must include in gross income amounts used for incidental expenses, such as room and board, travel, and optional equipment, and generally, amounts received as payments for teaching, research, or other services required as a condition for receiving the scholarship or fellowship grant. Also, you must include in income any part of the scholarship or fellowship that represents payments for services. Generally, when reporting scholarship income on your tax return, you will include the amounts on the same line as "Wages, salaries, tips, etc." Review the instructions of your tax form to determine how to report any income from scholarships.

However, you do not need to include in gross income any amounts you receive for services that are required by the National Health Service Corps Scholarship Program or the Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship and Financial Assistance Program.

If any part of your scholarship or fellowship grant is taxable, you may have to make estimated tax payments. For more information, refer to Publication 970, Tax Benefits for Education.

A_Fan wrote:How long before we have signing bonus' for college players and transfers based on salary offers from opposing schools?

“We as student athletes get utilized for what we do so well, and we’re definitely the best to get a scholarship to our universities. But at the end of the day, that doesn’t cover everything. We do have hungry nights that we don’t have enough money to get food in. Sometimes money is needed. I don’t think you should stretch it out to hundreds of thousands of dollars for playing, because a lot of times guys don’t know how to handle themselves with money.

I don’t see myself as so much of an employee, but when you see your jersey getting sold, it may not have your last name on it, but when you see your jersey getting sold, to some credit, you feel like you want something in return.”