At Northwestern, a Blitz to Defeat an Effort to Unionize
By BEN STRAUSS, NYT, APRIL 23, 2014
EVANSTON, Ill. — A National Labor Relations Board official took a historic step last month in ruling that Northwestern’s scholarship football players should be considered employees of the university and therefore had the right to unionize like other workers.
And then, almost immediately, Northwestern began a wide-ranging campaign to defeat a unionization vote, which is scheduled for Friday.
The president emeritus publicly said that a vote for the union could mean the end of Division I sports at Northwestern. A former quarterback visited the team to encourage players to vote no. Coach Pat Fitzgerald, a former football star who is revered on campus, has framed a vote for the union as a personal betrayal.
“Understand that by voting to have a union, you would be transferring your trust from those you know — me, your coaches and the administrators here — to what you don’t know — a third party who may or may not have the team’s best interests in mind,” Fitzgerald wrote to the team in an email.
(More here.)
EVANSTON, Ill. — A National Labor Relations Board official took a historic step last month in ruling that Northwestern’s scholarship football players should be considered employees of the university and therefore had the right to unionize like other workers.
And then, almost immediately, Northwestern began a wide-ranging campaign to defeat a unionization vote, which is scheduled for Friday.
The president emeritus publicly said that a vote for the union could mean the end of Division I sports at Northwestern. A former quarterback visited the team to encourage players to vote no. Coach Pat Fitzgerald, a former football star who is revered on campus, has framed a vote for the union as a personal betrayal.
“Understand that by voting to have a union, you would be transferring your trust from those you know — me, your coaches and the administrators here — to what you don’t know — a third party who may or may not have the team’s best interests in mind,” Fitzgerald wrote to the team in an email.
(More here.)
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