College athletes have long been exploited by the NCAA. While COVID-19 has stopped so much of our lives, NCAA athletes have seen no end to the abuses and dangers they face at the hands of their institutions.
Enough is enough. Yesterday, August 2, a coalition of athletes across several sports from Pac-12 schools banded together to anonymously publish the #WeAreUnited letter, demanding fair working conditions for athletes in the midst of COVID-19.
These athletes single out their conference instead of the NCAA itself, because the NCAA has made their disdain for athletes and their rights clear: time after time after time.
This letter seeks not only to protect athletes from the immediate threat of the novel virus, but also from the longtime, ongoing exploitation at the hands of schools, conferences and the NCAA. The letter outlines demands for racial equity, health care and, notably, financial compensation for all Pac-12 athletes. All while leveraging their own participation if the demands are not met. The letter is remarkable and it could not have come at a better time.
The demand for 50 percent of revenue to be equally distributed among college athletes recognizes the need for solidarity across sports and across gender. The naming of racial and economic inequality in the letter defines the movement’s solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and the importance of class consciousness in college sports.
The NCAA has nominatively supported Black Lives Matter, but it is hard to believe them. They are forcing a predominantly Black workforce of athletes into the unknown and unsafe conditions of playing during a pandemic, with little protections.
This letter must be the high-profile beginning of a labor movement. Athletes are the most visible workers. College athletes are in a unique position, as they do not profit from their labor. We need to take this organizing seriously. We need to recognize that any exploitation of labor is a threat to workers’ rights everywhere.
We cannot achieve a mass movement without solidarity. The recognition of violence and exploitation foments fertile ground for collective consciousness and that consciousness begets collective action.
We are in the middle of a global pandemic that has claimed the lives of nearly 160,000 Americans, and more worldwide. We are experiencing the worst economic downturn in the history of our nation. There is a civil rights drive happening that America has not seen since the insurgent years of the 1960s. The stakes are higher. The inequities are glaring. The dangers faced by those forced to work (whether it is by their employer or by the lack of any meaningful government stimulus) is evident to anyone with a heart.
The history of labor rights in America and any success made by the union movements would not be possible without its failures. The need for mass-action was only recognized when smaller collections of workers, maybe only from specific industries, had their fight for rights fail when they didn’t have the support of other workers.
Smaller collections of workers making direct demands, just as these Pac-12 athletes are making demands of their conference.
It wasn’t until solidarity was built across industries, and in many cases across lines of race and gender, to leverage worker power in order to bend the industries to the will of laborers. It required militant action for decades and real risk being taken to win things like living wages, eight-hour work days and the five-day work week.
The group of Pac-12 players are being advised by Ramogi Huma, executive director of the National Collegiate Players Association, a non-profit advocacy group for college athletes. Huma’s work in 2012 catalyzed California’s bill of rights for student athletes, one of the most progressive actions ever taken to protect college players.
"Right now, it's clear that the conferences don't need the NCAA. Each conference is an industry unto itself," Huma said to ESPN. "[The players are saying,] 'We're fine if our conference doesn't belong to the NCAA at all. We need to be treated fairly.'”
This is not the first time college players, or Ramogi Huma, has tried collective action. In 2014, only a few years ago, Northwestern’s football team attempted to unionize in order to bargain for better conditions. Huma’s activism helped garner recognition for the unique plight of college athletes and, specifically, NCAA football players.
Huma worked closely with Northwestern quarterback Kain Colter to build support in the locker room. Over the course of a few months, they gained enough momentum to appeal to the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago. The story broke nationwide.
Northwestern’s bid for unionization was supported by the United Steelworkers union, including the USW footing the legal bills for the team. USW knows the importance of solidarity across industries, because that is how they have won rights for their workers for decades.
A full court press from Northwestern, the NCAA and the US government eventually ended the drive to unionize. Despite falling short of establishing a union, Colter and Huma adequately scared the shit out of the entire college football establishment and its partners in the government.
We cannot blame Northwestern students for their failure. They valiantly went where few went before. The smaller scope of their unionizing effort could not stand up alone to the full force of the NCAA and the federal government. There was no solidarity. We cannot make that mistake again.
Fast forward six years, and this political landscape would be unrecognizable to anyone in 2014. The #WeAreUnited letter is the logical next step after Northwestern falling short. And the stakes are much higher.
It is no longer about one team, one school, or one sport. This is mass consciousness of the precarity of being a student athlete. It is the recognition of their exploitation and the demand for something better.
Our institutions have been failing us and exploiting the powerless. This moment has made us all so painfully aware of how little they care for us. Young people are not only scared in this moment, but hopeless.
The reaction to the letter was swift. Not only was there an outpouring of support, but also an outpouring of fear from the establishment. Athletes are already being threatened by schools who fear collectivizing. We are seeing union-busting in real time — a threat to collective bargaining everywhere. This fear is a recognition of power. Athletic programs are shaking in their boots because they know this could work.
This can be the moment of no return. It must be. We must seize this moment.
Players recognize their strength is in numbers, in solidarity, and in taking risk to leverage their work for recognition. They refuse to let the missteps and smaller scope of 2014 sink their movement, because the stakes are so much higher now.
As players put themselves in the organizing game, we cannot afford to stand on the sidelines.
It has taken the end of the world for us to realize the value of the labor done by medical professionals, by teachers, by grocery store workers, by postal workers, by the people in supply chains across the country. We criticize unemployed workers for making “too much” on unemployment, instead of the institutions that are not properly paying the essential workers who are risking their lives.
Casting aside this movement for the rights of student athletes is casting aside one of the most high-profile labor struggles in the country. We cannot allow another American labor movement to die.
The need for college player representation is dire, now more than ever. Of course, for decades there has been support for college athletes being paid. Even this year legislation has been moving through state and federal governments to allow athletes to make money from their likenesses.
Proper compensation is only the beginning. In the middle of a pandemic, when players are still expected to play, they deserve the right to organize, to demand safe and equitable working conditions, and to protect each other. Because it is clear the NCAA will not.
Edited by Ryanne Salzano
Special thanks to Larry Mishel for pointing out the role of USW in Northwestern’s unionization bid. And thank you to Larry for the decades he has spent advancing the cause of the American worker.
As a former walk-on athlete and as a varsity starter for two years, I am vehemently against any financial payment to athletes. All I ever received was free lunches during season. If this becomes commonplace, colleges will have to eliminate non-revenue sports. This to fund dumb jocks that will never graduate.