UCLA out - USC in: UCLA could eventually be drawn back in

The Mercury News carries a story concerning the ongoing trend toward viewing student-athletes, at least in money-making sports, as employees.

The future of collegiate athletics, for all anyone knows, was sealed a decade ago in a slew of union ballots that has never seen the light of day. Let’s travel back here for a moment to 2015, when a long-suffering labor movement by Northwestern athletes chasing employee status – led by quarterback Kain Colter – steamrolled all the way to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). According to a Sports Illustrated story a few years ago, players had assembled in 2014 at a hotel to cast votes in favor of unionizing. But in August a summer later, the NLRB unanimously declined to assert jurisdiction – anticlimactically ending a landscape-changing movement.                         

...Here’s the kicker, though: the NLRB came to that decision because it would essentially be too complicated to promote labor rights at one university, but not across an entire Big Ten conference or the NCAA. Importantly, they never ruled on whether or not those athletes were, in fact, employees. 

...This is all relevant, ultimately, because of a quietly earth-shattering complaint being brought by the NLRB against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA arguing USC’s “student-athletes” should be classified instead as employees. After an initial hearing on Zoom in early November, the trial will resume with in-person witness testimony on Monday. 

It’s a case that could spiral into the weeds, a process likely to drag through appeals and discovery that Michael LeRoy – a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois – estimates could take anywhere from three to seven years. But that process will be hugely important in the direction of collegiate athletics. If the NLRB eventually rules in favor of classifying USC athletes as employees, it would set a precedent for players to be able to unionize and collectively bargain for wages and other protections at private universities...

In Sept. 2021, Jennifer Abruzzo – tabbed just a few months earlier by President Joe Biden as the NLRB’s general counsel – issued a memo advising her prosecutorial stance on collegiate athletes as having full employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act. That opened a door for Ramogi Huma, once a football player at UCLA and formerly on the front lines of the Northwestern fight, and the organization National College Players Association (NCPA) to file a complaint in 2022 against USC, UCLA, the Pac-12 and the NCAA to the NLRB – a complaint LeRoy said had to arise from athletes coming forward to discuss forming a union. 

Eventually, Huma and the NCPA decided to drop charges against UCLA due to its status as a public university. And after a few months of investigation, the NLRB decided to file an official complaint in May that set the case against USC into motion...

Full story at https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/12/18/a-losing-hand-legal-experts-examine-uscs-push-against-players-being-classified-as-employees/.

Note that if the NLRB were to rule that student-athletes at private USC were employees, it is very likely that the California PERB (which covers public employees including at UC) would follow the precedent. Both schools are now, and will be, part of the same conference.