At Northwestern, a blitz to defeat a union effort

A unionization vote scheduled Friday at Northwestern University faces mounting opposition on the campus north of Chicago.

A month after the National Labor Relations Board historically ruled the school’s scholarship football players could unionize as university employees, the New York Times detailed the push back on campus: The president emeritus publicly said a vote for the union could mean the end of Division I sports at Northwestern; a former quarterback visited the team to encourage players to vote no; and Coach Pat Fitzgerald, a former Wildcat football star, has framed a vote for the union as a personal betrayal.

For its part, university administration has been stroking football players by issuing new iPads on the first day of practice after the NLRB decision and holding a team party at a bowling alley.

“What the university has tried to do is to communicate clearly the university’s position to the student-athletes who are going to be voting in the election,” university spokesman Alan Cubbage told the Times. “We have done so following the guidelines and procedures outlined by the National Labor Relations Board. Our position is that we believe that our student-athletes are primarily students. That has not changed.”

The pressure is on the broad shoulders of 76 football players eligible to vote Friday by secret ballot.

Read more from the New York Times.