CHICAGO (AP) — Northwestern University senior quarterback Zack Oliver says “there wasn’t much of a reaction” when the football team heard about a national ruling that prevents its members from unionizing.
Oliver declined to say Monday how he voted last year when the team cast secret ballots on whether to unionize. Those ballots were sealed pending the full National Labor Relations Board’s ruling and will now be destroyed.
He says the team, which is currently holding summer practices in Wisconsin, was “going to be fine either way.”
Monday’s ruling dismissed a March 2014 decision by a regional NLRB director in Chicago who said scholarship football players are effectively school employees and entitled to organize. It didn’t directly address the question of whether the players are employees.
