Ahead of a
hearing in the House titled “Safeguarding Student-Athletes from
NLRB Misclassification,”
ACE and five other higher education associations submitted a statement for the record opposing the National Labor Relations
Board’s (NLRB) decision to treat collegiate student-athletes as employees.
The hearing, jointly
held Tuesday by Education and the Workforce subcommittees on Health,
Employment, Labor, and Pensions and Higher Education and Workforce Development,
examined the NLRB ruling that Dartmouth College’s men’s
basketball players are employees—team voted last week to unionize—and the broader impacts
on college sports and higher education.
Democrats on
the subcommittees highlighted some benefits for athletes that could result from
unionization, whereas Republicans emphasized that this seismic change could
drastically harm college athletics, institutions, and students, and cause unintended
consequences.
"Classifying
student-athletes as employees is an existential threat to the future of college
sports on many campuses,” said Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), chair of the Higher
Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee. “The increased costs of
unionization and administrative headaches would threaten to make low-funded
programs economically unviable.”
The statement
ACE submitted highlights three main topics: the distorted portrayals of college
athletics; implications of the NLRB’s decision; and financial threats for
institutions. The groups detailed how the vast majority of college athletic
programs do not generate revenue and the extension of the NLRB’s ruling across
college athletics would make fielding intercollegiate teams cost-prohibitive
for most athletics departments.
“Treating
student-athletes as employees under the [National Labor Relations Act], or the [Fair
Labor Standards Act], has deeply troubling implications for the continued
viability of intercollegiate athletics, and would be potentially devastating
for many of America’s institutions of higher education, as well as for future
generations of aspiring collegiate athletes who risk losing the opportunity to
have an intercollegiate athletics experience,” the statement reads.
The NLRB’s
ruling is the latest event that is reshaping college athletics, and additional
important decisions are coming. A U.S. Court of Appeals is set to rule on a
pending case—in which ACE has submitted an amicus brief—regarding whether student-athletes
playing non-revenue sports can be considered employees under the Fair Labor
Standards Act.
“We stand
ready to assist Congress in evaluating the implications of these dramatic
threats to our colleges and universities and their student-athletes,” the
groups wrote in the letter.
To read the statement,
click here.