"Game Changer: the NLRB, Student-Athletes, and the Future of College Sports"
House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions
2025-04-08
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Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
to the foundation of college athletics is efforts by activists and the National Labor Relations Board appointees under the Biden-Harris administration to deem student athletes as employees. Because of this, there are many unresolved questions regarding how college sports will look in the future. Despite more money than ever flowing into college athletics, universities are supporting fewer sports teams due to a range of challenges. This reality results in fewer scholarship opportunities for young American athletes, many of whom will not become professional athletes but rather play sports as part of their educational pursuits. At its core, college sports are about enhancing student athletes and their academic experience as well as enhancing their careers after graduation. Unfortunately, that mission was threatened by President Biden's radical NLRB stemming from former General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo's memo providing guidance to all NLRB field offices that certain student athletes are employees under the National Labor Relations Act. The mandate to reclassify student athletes as employees would have devastating consequences. The increased cost of unionization and administrative headaches would have threatened the viability of many college athletic programs, including many women's sports and small school athletic programs, resulting in fewer teams, fewer scholarships, and fewer opportunities for our young people. Additionally, employee status would have triggered unintended consequences for student athletes and could have led them to receiving fewer benefits, having scholarships revoked for poor performance, and having scholarships taxed by the IRS. While the Trump NLRB acting general counsel rightfully withdrew the Abruzzo memo and the relevant cases before the NLRB have been withdrawn, it is still incumbent on the committee to consider whether federal legislation is needed to ensure a future board does not attempt to impose the same wrong-headed policy.
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Unknown (SPEAKER_13)
As I mentioned during the hearing we convened on this subject last March, college athletics should be, college athletes should be treated like people first and foremost and students, not just sources of revenue for their college and universities. We should stand with them, ensure their well-being, and reject any effort to strip away their right to organize and collectively bargain if necessary. Organizations like the NCAA boast massive revenues from the hard work of college athletes. While these college athletes are often taken advantage of and mistreated, college athletes put in long hours on top of their classes, homework, extracurriculars, and even a job, if they are permitted to have one. In the 2023 to 2024 fiscal year, the NCAA raked in almost $1.4 billion in revenue, a $91 million increase from the prior year. And in 2023, Division I schools spent over 3.6 billion on coaches' salaries, making up the largest spending category of these schools' athletic finances. College athletes are understandably looking for ways to level the playing field and gain more of a voice. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues have pushed to unilaterally prevent any college athlete from being designated as an employee. This measure would essentially grant the NCAA a blank check to avoid all responsibility for employment liability and allow rampant mistreatment of athletes without recourse. Additionally, providing any special carve out to the NCAA where college athletes would be exempt from employee classification would inevitably rob athletes of rights to which they entitled, while also creating a new category outside of traditional employment that would be ripe for exploitation and abuse. We should not be in the business of creating loopholes that allow athletes to be exploited, potentially harming their health and safety.
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Unknown (SPEAKER_13)
Many of us on this side are not advocating to broadly classify all college athletes as employees. We recognize that there is a large spectrum of college athletics. and that some programs have greater resource and exert more control over athletes than others, particularly concerned about money and support from the major sports, football and basketball, to minor sports, which are such a big part of the college environment and athletics. That is why, in many ways, our existing labor and employment laws are rooted in a fact-specific analysis. This is a complicated issue that only grows more complex as the years go on and college sports industry gets bigger and bigger. That being said, if an athlete meets the legal standard of being an employee as set out in the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act, then that athlete should be afforded the same considerations and protections of any other employee, including the protected right to form a union and bargain for better conditions and a greater share of the product, which is enormous, of their labor. Even President Trump appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated, quote, college and student athletes could potentially engage in collective bargaining or seek some other negotiated agreement to provide student athletes a fair share of the revenues that they generate for their colleges, end quote from Justice Kavanaugh. College athletes should be treated with fairness and dignity. I hope we can have a constructive conversation about this today. And as I've said, it's complicated. One rule doesn't apply, except that if you're clearly an employee by federal law, then you are an employee. Finally, I think it's important to acknowledge the broader context in which this hearing is happening. Last month, the president issued an executive order dismantling the Department of Education and cutting its workforce in half. This decision seems bound to impact the department work administrating student loans and Pell grants, among other key areas.
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Unknown (SPEAKER_13)
In the coming weeks, my Republican colleagues on this committee are likely to cut critical student loan programs, hopefully they will not, to help finance their multi-trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy. In the next month or so, college students will be graduating and entering a working world that is currently being thrown into chaos, thanks to the administration's regressive tariffs that economists fear could spur a recession. College athletes and all college students and their families could suffer real harm from these decisions. We must be thoughtful when we make these decisions. And we cannot divorce the conversation we're having today from the policies being pursued by the administration. I thank the chair and I yield back the balance of my time. I thank the ranking member.
Pursuant to Committee Rule 8C, all members who wish to insert written statements into the record may do so by submitting them to the committee clerk electronically in Microsoft Word format by 5 p.m. 14 days after this hearing. And without objection, the hearing record will remain open for 14 days to allow such statements and other extraneous material noted during the hearing to be submitted for the original hearing record. I will now turn to the introduction of our four distinguished witnesses. The first witness is Daniel L. Nash, a shareholder of Littler, a law firm here in Washington, D.C. Our second witness is Mrs. Morgan Winn, a former softball student athlete at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
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