Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds the following: The National Labor Relations Act ( 29 U.S.C. 151 et seq. ) seeks to remedy the inequality of bargaining power between employees and employers primarily through establishing and protecting the rights of employees to self-organize and designate representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection. Labor organizations often originate to remedy unfair and exploitative labor practices by employers through assisting employees in securing more equitable terms and conditions of their employment, including fair compensation and safe working conditions, which individual employees would be unlikely to negotiate successfully for on their own.
Labor organizations serve unique and essential purposes for professional athletes competing in sports leagues, where it is desirable to establish uniform rules and standards across multiple employers. These rules and standards bear significant consequences to the athletes in terms of compensation, health and safety, and the ability or lack thereof for athletes to choose their employer, among other issues related to the athletes’ well-being. The formation of labor organizations representing athletes in professional sports leagues in the United States has helped end exploitative practices by team owners and management, particularly through establishing collective-bargaining agreements that have secured athletes a fair share of the revenues their talent and labor produces, as well as more equitable terms of their employment and protections for their short- and long-term health.
College athletes face exploitative and unfair labor practices by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (referred to in this section as the NCAA ) and its member institutions, primarily through the denial of the basic economic and labor rights of such athletes, which the NCAA and its member institutions have justified by defining college athletes as amateurs. The NCAA and its member institutions have denied college athletes a fair wage for their labor by colluding to cap compensation; they maintain strict and exacting control over the terms and conditions of college athletes’ labor; and they exercise the ability to terminate an athlete’s eligibility to compete if the athlete violates these terms and conditions.
College athletes exhibit the markers of employment as established under the common law definition of the term employee : They perform a valuable service for their respective colleges under a contract for hire in the form of grant-in-aid agreements; these agreements assert significant control over how athletes perform their work and the conditions under which they work; and they receive compensation in the form of grant-in-aid and stipends in exchange for their athletic services.
To establish more equitable terms and conditions for college athletes’ labor, college athletes need representation of their own choosing to negotiate collective-bargaining agreements with their respective colleges and the athletic conferences that help set rules and standards across an entire league. To organize effectively, college athletes must be able to form collective bargaining units across institutions of higher education that compete against each other, including within athletic conferences; and, accordingly, to establish effective collective bargaining rights for college athletes under this Act, the National Labor Relations Act must be amended to cover both private and public institutions of higher education to the extent that college athletes attending such institutions fall within the definition of employee under that Act, as amended by this Act.
The Constitution of the United States vests Congress with the power to regulate commerce between the States, and intercollegiate sports, which are maintained by athletic associations that host competitions between colleges across States, involves interstate commerce that generates annual revenue of more than $15,000,000,000. Intercollegiate sports’ significant engagement in interstate commerce justifies application of the National Labor Relations Act ( 29 U.S.C. 151 et seq. ) to regulate the labor market within which public and private institutions of higher education compete and set rules pertaining to the wages and working conditions of college athletes.
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