The efforts of the Dartmouth basketball association explained
In a huge step for the rights of college athletes, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team voted 13-2 on Tuesday to form a union.
The historic election was the latest event to challenge the founding principles of the NCAA, which has long prided itself on protecting the concept of amateurism in collegiate sports. Now it appears the landscape is primed for a shakeup, with the NCAA embroiled in several simultaneous legal battles over its relationship with its athletes.
While the unionization process is far from complete, Tuesday’s vote could mark a turning point as the decision ripples across the college sports landscape.
How did we get here, where are things and what’s next? Here’s what you need to know.
How we arrived at Tuesday’s vote
The broader push to treat college athletes as employees has been percolating for years, but this particular effort took off last September, when fifteen Dartmouth basketball players petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to unionize. The New England-based chapter of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union representing approximately 2 million workers in the U.S. and Canada.
The school opposed the move, but in February NLRB regional director Laura Sacks ruled that the players are employees and could move forward with their election to unionize.
Sacks’ ruling found that Dartmouth players are employees because they perform work that benefits the school, the school has significant control over their work, and players receive compensation in the form of equipment, lodging, tickets and other resources.
“Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I believe that the petitioned basketball players are employees in the meaning of the law,” Sacks wrote. .
Why are Dartmouth players unionized?
Unionization would allow the players to collectively bargain with Dartmouth over wages, scheduling and other policies and conditions related to playing.
Dartmouth players Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil, both juniors on the team, said of Tuesday’s vote, “It goes without saying that we, as students, can also be both campus workers and union members.”
“Dartmouth seems stuck in the past. It is time for the era of amateurism to end,” Haskins and Myrthil said in a statement. “We call on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees and President Beilock to live up to the truth of her own words and cultivate ‘courageous spaces’ where ‘changing minds based on new evidence is a good thing.’”
They added that they wanted to “create a less exploitative business model for college sports” and that they would continue to talk with other Dartmouth and Ivy League athletes in the coming months about forming unions and working together to advocate for rights and well-being of athletes.
Didn’t this happen at Northwestern?
In 2014, Northwestern football players also attempted to unionize and received a similar ruling at the regional level, but their case was overturned at the national level because the NLRB ruled it could not assert its jurisdiction.
Because the NLRB only applies to the private sector, state schools are not subject to its decisions. The NLRB determined in 2015 that because Northwestern was in the Big Ten, then a conference otherwise full of state schools, a national ruling on the players’ ability to unionize would not guarantee stability in labor relations promote because of the variety of state schools. labor legislation within the conference footprint.
The key difference this time: Dartmouth is a member of the all-private Ivy League, which won’t have the same competitive equity issue as the Big Ten.
What could Tuesday’s vote mean for college athletes beyond Dartmouth?
While Tuesday’s vote does not open the door for all other college athletes to be considered employees, it does serve as an important step in one of the many potential cases involving milestone athletes across the country.
If The AthleticsNicole Auerbach wrote in a recent story exploring the implications of athletes becoming employees: “A victory for the Dartmouth players’ union efforts could motivate other private schools at conferences with more diverse memberships than the all-private Ivy League to promote themselves to organise.”
Where else does workers’ struggle take place?
Auerbach also previously noted that the Dartmouth ruling could be cited in the various lawsuits underway across the country regarding the status of college athletes. She noted that any of Johnson v. NCAA (which asserts whether athletes are hourly employees), House v. NCAA (fighting for back pay for athletes who competed before 2021) or the NLRB case in California could all be upended. the business of college athletics.
In that NLRB case in California, if an ongoing lawsuit against an unfair labor practice charge confirms that USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA should be considered joint employers of athletes, all college athletes could be given the opportunity to unionize regardless of the state they are in. where they live or the type of school they attend.
What’s next?
In the wake of Tuesday’s vote, Dartmouth filed a request for review with the NLRB. That review, and a possible appeal to federal court afterward, could mean official recognition of the union and collective bargaining would still be months away.
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(Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)