EVANSTON -- A number of policies in the Northwestern football program’s rules handbook have been changed to comply with national labor standards, following a National Labor Relations Board Advice Memorandum issued in September.
The document asserts that Northwestern’s football program violated provisions in the National Labor Relations Act by restricting the rights of the scholarship football players through various team policies.
Although the national level of the NLRB refused to issue a ruling last August after regional director Peter Ohr found that Northwestern’s scholarship football players were employees and could unionize, for purposes of the memorandum, the document explicitly refers to the scholarship football players as employees and Northwestern as the employer.