Isn't the distinction between private and public universities just a question of degree, since state funding has largely been ceded to corporate largesse at the big public universities?
In short, no. The source of funding of a public entity is not the only (or even the primary) test for whether that entity is exempt from the NLRA. That test, most commonly cited to Hawkins County, 167 NLRB 691 (1967), is whether the employer is either "created directly by the
State" or "administered by State-appointed or elected officials." Both are likely true of most public universities. (There may be some weird edge-case exceptions; I know Temple University has gone through some major gyrations as to whether and, if so, which of, its operations are subject to the NLRA.)
Kind of wild that this case is bubbling up just as major restructuring is happening at the conference level. Going to make it hard to impose any kind of bargaining stability if the Big Ten and SEC keep extracting concessions by threatening to merge and break off from the NCAA.
Yeah, it's a bit ironic that I'd have cared a lot more about this when the issue first arose in 2015, before the insatiable greed of universities and TV channels destroyed the historic geographical structure of college sports and replaced it with a totally inane, ad-hoc arrangement of convenience (epitomized by the upcoming move of Stanford and the University of California to the, ahem, Atlantic Coast Conference).
Isn't the distinction between private and public universities just a question of degree, since state funding has largely been ceded to corporate largesse at the big public universities?
In short, no. The source of funding of a public entity is not the only (or even the primary) test for whether that entity is exempt from the NLRA. That test, most commonly cited to Hawkins County, 167 NLRB 691 (1967), is whether the employer is either "created directly by the
State" or "administered by State-appointed or elected officials." Both are likely true of most public universities. (There may be some weird edge-case exceptions; I know Temple University has gone through some major gyrations as to whether and, if so, which of, its operations are subject to the NLRA.)
Kind of wild that this case is bubbling up just as major restructuring is happening at the conference level. Going to make it hard to impose any kind of bargaining stability if the Big Ten and SEC keep extracting concessions by threatening to merge and break off from the NCAA.
Yeah, it's a bit ironic that I'd have cared a lot more about this when the issue first arose in 2015, before the insatiable greed of universities and TV channels destroyed the historic geographical structure of college sports and replaced it with a totally inane, ad-hoc arrangement of convenience (epitomized by the upcoming move of Stanford and the University of California to the, ahem, Atlantic Coast Conference).