Robert Carter: Look for the union fullback
Published 3:49 pm Saturday, April 5, 2014
Those of us of a certain age will vividly remember a television spot back in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, in which a chorus of factory workers sang a catchy little jingle with these lyrics:
“Look for the union label, when you are buying a coat, dress, or blouse…”
If you’re anywhere from age 40 onward, you’re probably singing along right now, even if you can’t remember the words past those I just gave you.
It was a very memorable jingle made by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, and represented a time when most women’s clothing was still made in America. That has not been the case for some time now, and the ILGWU went the way of the dodo bird. It merged with a handful of other unions to form something called UNITE HERE (it’s a really long compound acronym). The membership is maybe a fourth of what it was when those workers were singing. But I digress.
In my rather strange mind, I’m conjuring up an image of a bunch of football players trying to sing such a jingle of the same type. Here goes nothing:
“Look for the union fullback, when he is scoring a touchdown for you…”
I’ll stop there. It only gets worse.
I don’t think that the effort to allow college football players to form a union will result in some goofy video like that. But the fact that a National Labor Relations Board official in Chicago is paving the way for players to unionize is anything but cute. It could — as countless commentators have said breathlessly since the decision was handed down last week — potentially end the game of college football as we now know it.
But probably not. Hyperbole may generate a lot of page views for a website, but it does little to shed light on the topic.
The Chicago ruling held that football players are employees of the school, not merely students, and therefore had the right to organize.
The truth, as we know it right now, is that no one knows exactly what will happen. This much we know as of now: The ruling only applies to players for private universities within the jurisdiction of the NLRB Chicago office — that it to say, it mainly applies to Northwestern University, where the union effort began. The school has already announced plans to appeal to the full NLRB board in Washington, D.C.; a decision there will affect the entire country.
Nonetheless, it is a shot across the bow by the union movement. And think what you will about the political inclinations of most trade unions, but the effort does bring to light a number of issues that should be addressed for college football players.
For instance: What happens to a player who signs a scholarship, but suffers a career-ending injury in, say, his sophomore year. Under current practice, the scholarship goes bye-bye when the football career does.
Frankly, that’s downright immoral.
There are a number of issues — grievances, if you will — that the athletes who seek union representation have. Many have merit; a few do not.
But those issues can be resolved without resorting to turning the entire college football apparatus upside down. The knock-on effects of union organization for amateur athletes are more far-reaching than many of us realize. For instance, how would this affect other sports — especially those where athletes have no realistic hope of any professional career afterward?
And would unionized players be allowed to take job actions — in other words, to strike?
But that’s what could happen, and it’s one of the reasons that Northwestern officials have threatened to just shut the whole program down if unionization goes through.
I guess that would be the first lockout, huh?
