Student-athletes should be considered employees: NLRB

The National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel has reinstituted a policy introduced by an Obama administration appointee and issued updated guidance stating that certain student-athletes may be considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act, and therefore afforded the act’s protections.

Wednesday’s memo by NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo reinstates a policy introduced in January 2017 by Obama appointee Richard F. Griffiths Jr., who was still serving at the time in his post under the Trump administration. The policy was rescinded in December 2017.

Football players at academic institutions are employees under the NLRA, the memo states. “Misclassifying them as ‘student athletes’ and leading them to believe they are not entitled to the Act’s protection, has a chilling effect on Section 7 activity,” Ms. Abruzzo said in her memo. Section 7 gives employees the right to engage in concerted activities for mutual aid or protection,

The memo refers to the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous June ruling in NCAA v. Alston which, Ms. Abruzzo said, “recognized that college sports is a profit-making enterprise and rejected the NCAA’s antitrust defense based on the notion of amateurism in college athletics.”

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