Dartmouth players are workers who can unionize, a U.S. official says

A federal official said Monday that members of the Dartmouth men's basketball team were university employees, paving the way for the team to vote that could make it the nation's first unionized college sports program.

In a statement, National Labor Relations Board Boston regional director Laura Sacks said that because Dartmouth “had the right to monitor the team's work” and because the team did that work “in exchange for compensation” such as equipment and game tickets, the players were employees under the National Labor Relations Act.

No date has yet been set for the election on whether to join a union, and the outcome would have to be certified by the NLRB. The university and the NCAA are expected to appeal the director's decision.

In September, all 15 players on the team's varsity roster signed a petition and submitted it to the labor council to join the Service Employees International Union. On October 5, Dartmouth's lawyers responded, arguing that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain because they did not receive athletic scholarships as members of the Ivy League and because the program lost money every year.

The NCAA and its member schools have long resisted unionization efforts by college athletes, defending the student-athlete model that has come under fire over the years from labor activists, judges and elected officials.

In 2014, the Northwestern football team led a college program's high-profile attempt to unionize, arguing that the players had the right to bargain collectively because they were compensated through scholarships.

In a statement similar to Monday's, a regional director of the Labor Council said the Northwest exchanges are players were university employeesand union elections were held. But the sealed ballots were ultimately destroyed after the five-member NLRB ruled in August 2015 that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain.

The environment surrounding labor rights in collegiate athletics has changed since then.

“So much has changed in college athletics,” said Jason Stahl, the founder and executive director of the College Football Players Association, which promotes efforts by college football players to form unions.

In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA's ban on compensation for college athletes violated antitrust law, forcing the NCAA to allow athletes to profit from their own name, image and likeness. Realignment has expanded the traditional geographic boundaries of conferences, increasing travel times for players in leagues that will soon stretch from the West Coast to the East Coast.

Support for unions more broadly is also higher today than in 2015, according to available polls.

Michael LeRoy, a professor and sports labor expert at the University of Illinois, said he expected an election to be held in Dartmouth, with votes not being announced, before the NLRB made its final ruling.

Mr. LeRoy also noted that the current NLRB, under President Biden, had signaled more support for unionization efforts among college athletes than that under President Barack Obama during the Northwestern union drive.

In September 2021, Jennifer A. Abruzzo, the board's general counsel, said that college athletes should be considered employees under federal labor law, citing that year's Supreme Court ruling that college sports was a for-profit business, and argued that simply classifying them as “student-athletes” would lead to a “chilling effect” on organizational efforts at collegiate programs.

“This particular labor board has been very transparent about its position that at least some college athletes are, in fact, employees,” Mr. LeRoy said. “That was not the case in 2014.”