A National Labor Relations Board official on March 26 gave football players at Northwestern University a green light to unionize. “It is clear that the scholarships the players receive are compensation for the athletic services they perform for the employer,” regional director Peter Ohr held, noting that the football program generated $235 million in revenue from 2003 to 2012. “It cannot be said that the employer’s scholarship players are ‘primarily students.’ ” Northwestern insisted that “ our student-athletes are not employees, but students.”
$9.5 BILLION SETTLEMENT
Bank of America Corp. agreed on March 26 to pay more than $9.5 billion to settle claims by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and New York state stemming from the financial crisis. The FHFA alleged the bank falsely represented that mortgages it sold to the agency met agency standards. The bank reached a separate settlement in a 2010 lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman against it and two former executives accused of misrepresenting facts to shareholders during the merger with Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2008.
