Ohio legislators seek to assert college athletes are not employees
Only in Ohio. You would think they would have more important issues to deal with.
College athletes in Ohio would not be considered employees under state law, under changes to the state’s budget review made by a legislative committee on Monday.
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/04/ohio_legislators_seek_to_asser.html
Under federal law, yes. Yes they are. You can't just say "THEY DO SPORTS SO THEY AREN'T EMPLOYEES." It's a legal thing.
Now, Ohio can, to an extent, clarify that under STATE law, they aren't to be treated as employees for collective bargaining rights purposes. But, again, this isn't some self-evident truth we're working with here.
"Under federal law, yes."
Under CURRENT interpretation of the law, PRIVATE university athletes are employees.
Remember - the decision didn't apply to public universities.
The public/private thing is correct, as I pointed out below.
However, FWIW, there really isn't a distinction between "under the current interpretation of the law" and "under the law." The law is the black text as interpreted by the relevant body. You can debate how binding the precedent here is (Ohio and Evanston are in different NLRB regions), but barring an overturn, it's law.
However, FWIW, there really isn't a distinction between "under the current interpretation of the law" and "under the law."
While the NLRA itself is law, most decisions of the NLRB are technically "regulations" and not "legislation" - this means that while they carry the force of law, they are not law.
"they carry the force of law" That sounds like law...
This, another example, that Abe Lincoln was wrong when he said, "....government of the people...." when the truth is that it is government by judges and bureaucrats. Simply amazing that in a land which prides itself upon being democratic it has allowed a relative handful, sometimes a literal handful, of non-elected appointees to dictate new law and repeal old laws by simple fiat.
It's actually our version of democracy working as intended.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't only scholarship college athletes considered employees?
What if you really, really, really believe they aren't employees? Then are they not employees?
Are they considered athletes now? Last time I checked state-funded colleges didn't consider them employees.
more of a 'don't get any ideas' kind of message to the states student athletes.
Correct me if I'm wrong the NW case was a Federal Labor board, I assume then he/she was citing federal law. Does not federal law supercede a State law?
It was the creation of new law.
Northwestern's ruling almost certainly sets them up on a collision course for the SCOTUS. Ohio or any other state putting laws on the books now isn't going to change much of what's going to happen, if it changes anything at all.
Just because you say somebody is not an employee does not mean that they are not an employee, for instance under IRS guidelines. The determination of whether or not an individual is an employee depends on objective facts and circumstances, and not on what some half-wit Ohio legislator declares.
States can define "employees" for purposes of union rights:
Or the NLRB?
Collective bargaining by Ohio state employees is governed by Ohio state law. The determination of whether an individual is an employee of a state institution depends on objective facts and circumstances as they relate to Ohio state law. If the Ohio legislature passes a statute declaring that student-athletes at Ohio public universities are not employees, then they aren't employees so far as their collective bargaining rights are concerned, no matter what their tax status might happen to be.
In theory a court could declare that statute unconstitutional, I suppose, but I can't imagine on what grounds. There's not, at present, any superceding federal law. I don't see a successful challenge to this in either the state or the federal courts, if it passes.
And it happens that all of the major football schools in Ohio are public schools.
lets see how osu fans take to this once everything falls into place and players realize they can make more money by not going to osu and their football team tanks. The state of ohio will be ripe for the picking in a few years
The NW NLRB ruling has absolutely nothing to do with a school's ability or inability to pay players. All universities that are NCAA members will still be forbidden from paying players under NCAA rules. The determination by NLRB does not and cannot change that, only the NCAA (or legislatively I suppose, but that would be a hornet's nest) can make that change. Ohio State football will not be affected by this legislation in any way.
Yes, collective bargaining by state employees is governed by state law, but the definition of what an employee is, or rather, who is NOT an employee, cannot be inconsistent with Ohio state law or Federal law. I don't know anything about the former, but I could see a Federal suit arguing that such a law violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. Such a law might exclude student athletes from the benefits and protections afforded other employees, if the courts accept the idea that they are in fact employees. You might scoff at this, but the equal protection clause has been used in more bizaare ways than what I am suggesting.
My life would go on if college athletics lost its *amateur* status, right or wrong. In Ohio, millions of people will lose their identity.
and a place to poop.
whole lotta OSU football players sweating this thing tonight.
to tOSU games
This is the state that actually paid someone to draft up a law that says the letter M is illegal for a day.
before major corporations attempt to conclude their workers are really just students and not really employees.
As ridiculous as it sounds, this is basically the reasoning behind unpaid internships.
Coincidentally, those are rapidly becoming more and more illegal, too.
the less I understand why an athlete needs to be a student for me to have the same connection to the game as a fan. I don't like college football because I like some abstract notion of a bunch of kids playing football and also being scholars. I like college football because I like the University of Michigan and want whatever conglomerate of players that have on the winged helmets to beat the other team.
If you really don't find any nexus in the student-athlete moniker, then what is the difference between what you would accept and teams in the NFL?
called the University of Michigan Wolverines that play in Ann Arbor in the Big House wearing maize and blue with winged helmets.
So as long as there exists a Big Ten/SEC/ ACC/Big XII/Pac 10 ish type substance, full of teams still wearing the same colors and playing at the same places, then I would be fine with whatever else shit goes down.
You are very generous in what you are willing to consider a Big Ten ish type substance.
are all the players (and parents) who positioned since middle school or before to get accepted to attend a university they may otherwise not be competitive to get accepted to, and have that education paid for. There are kids, and moms, and dads who earnestly want both a shot at the NFL or NBA and a college education. (e.g., our own Denard Robinson, or UConn's Shabazz Napier)
To me - the ones who just want to play ball (and capitalize on it) - can pound sand. Maybe college athletics would be better off if they did so.
So much as the Northwestern CAPA wants to use the "profits" NW is getting and alter the rules to improve the student part of the equation, fairly protect the players in the event of injury or the otherwise ending of their athletic career, and make the byzantine NCAA rules more reasonable - I support them.
In short - as long as everyone is playing by the same rules - I would much rather watch athletic students play football and basketball than professional athletes play for my school's brand.
So yeah, I'm going to call BS on Napier and athletes needing more. The avenues are there.
Is this going to make me rich?
I'm going to say yes.
If they would just let players take cash from whoever wants to pay them, the entire union thing would go away.
I don't know if it would go away. But boy would it be one gigantic step in the right direction and would really quiet down a lot of the criticism against the NCAA.
For OSU anyway, the real question is not whether the scholarship athletes are employees, it's whether they are students.
There are certain student athletes in Ohio that are known to be paid employees of tatoo parlors, drug dens and car dealerships. But who really cares about that?
I would say this is a pretty weighty issue for their legislature to deal with, actually. If they are considered employees (in this case of the state of Ohio), that would be a SIGNIFICANT budgetary outlay for the state, when you factor in payroll taxes, health insurance, etc (basically everything that any other state employee gets).
Somebody's got to head this trainwreck off. If football and basketball players unionize, it'll crater what we know as college sports.
disregard