Even though many individual workers don’t favor the Democrats, the union hierarchy has hitched its fortunes to them. Back in 2014, Big Labor got excited over the possibility of unionizing college football players when the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Chicago ruled that members of Northwestern University’s football team were eligible to vote for union representation if they wanted. The key to that ruling was the regional director’s opinion that college football players are “employees” within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act and therefore eligible to unionize. Unlike all other employees, college football players do not have contracts to work for the school as athletes. It said that the dispute raised “novel and unique” issues and pointed to the obvious difference between college football players and other people who clearly are university employees.

Source: Forbes February 22, 2017 06:00 UTC