Northwestern Football players can't form union: labor panel

Crain's Chicago Business reports:

Northwestern University football players cannot form a labor union, the National Labor Relations Board said today.

In a 19-page opinion, the five-member board "declined to exert its jurisdiction" on a landmark ruling last year by its Chicago regional director that the players are employees of the school with the right to unionize.

The ruling effectively ends the effort by the NU football players to unionize, and the players do not have the ability to appeal to any other group, though the NLRB left open the possibility of reconsidering the issue in the future for another institution.

The opinion said a union in college sports "would not promote uniformity and stability in labor relations" and that "recent changes, as well as calls for additional reforms, suggest that the situation of scholarship players may well change in the near future."

Organized crime.. we mean unions lose one today.