Oregon State University (OSU) has filed legal objections to a union petition that members of its women’s basketball team submitted.
In the July 31 union petition, the United College Athletes Association (UCAA) said the team’s 14 players want to be union represented and asked the Oregon Employment Relations Board to certify their decision to unionize.
But in an 11-page legal filing on Aug. 24, attorneys for OSU argue that the players aren’t public employees under Oregon law. The public university is represented in the case by Fisher & Phillips, one of the nation’s top anti-union law firms.
“Playing on a college basketball team is not service performed for hire,” the university said in its challenge. “Student athletes at OSU matriculate to obtain and education and voluntarily pursue basketball as part of that experience.”
The question of whether student athletes are employees has been a hotly debated point of labor law in recent years. During the Biden administration, the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board issued a memo arguing that college athletes should be considered university employees for the purpose of unionizing.
The case has been assigned to Oregon administrative law judge Martin Kehoe. Hearings on the case started Sept. 14 and 15 and will continue Oct. 19 and 20.
