NLRB General Counsel sends strong message: Many scholarship athletes are employees

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will consider many college scholarship athletes to be “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), Board General Counsel (GC) Jennifer Abruzzino recently announced in Memorandum GC-21-08. 

More expansive view

To a certain extent, Abruzzino’s announcement wasn’t a great surprise. In 2017, former NLRB GC Richard Griffin wrote in GC-17-01 that scholarship football players at Northwestern University were employees under the NLRA. Abruzzino’s supporting arguments suggest, however, the Board may take a much more expansive view of which scholarship athletes are employees.

Abruzzino’s memo made it abundantly clear the NLRB will treat scholarship football players at private Division I Football Bowl Subdivision schools as employees (the NLRA doesn’t apply to public entities). But she also wrote:

There are undoubtedly other sports that provide substantial financial benefit to colleges/universities and that involve scholarship athletes who are under significant control by the schools and the NCAA. However, in the absence of full Regional investigation, like the one undertaken with respect to the petition filed in Northwestern University, we cannot conclusively determine the employee status of other kinds of student athletes in cases that may arise in the future.

Obviously, the door is open for other athletes to make the argument they are also employees under the NLRA. Abruzzino’s memo indicates the NLRB will examine the following factors when making future determinations: