Hearings Begin to Consider if College Players are Employees - Higher Education

Hearings Begin to Consider if College Players are Employees - Higher Education: CHICAGO—A federal agency kicked off the first in a series of hearings Wednesday on whether to approve a bid by Northwestern University football players to unionize, and both sides acknowledged the key question was whether college athletes can be considered employees.

During a National Labor Relations Board hearing in Chicago, lawyers for the proposed union and the university agreed that if college football players qualify as employees, they can legally form the first-of-its-kind union and if not, they can’t.

“That is the key threshold issue,” university attorney Alex Barbour said.

If the union, called the College Athletes Players Association, or CAPA, eventually gets the green light, advocates say it will provide athletes a vehicle to lobby for financial security and improved safety on the field.