Dartmouth College is one of the oldest universities in America, but on Tuesday, the school's men's basketball players ushered college sports into a new generation.
The players voted 13-2, with all team members voting, to recognize Service Employees International Union Local 560 as their union representative. This is the first time college athletes have formed a union.
The election was held on Dartmouth College's campus in Hanover, New Hampshire, with the supervision of NLRB officials. The vote followed the NLRB's refusal to act on Dartmouth's motion to postpone the election.
If the vote is approved, which could occur as early as next week, Dartmouth will have 10 business days to file an objection with the national NLRB, after which the basketball players will have a chance to respond. If Dartmouth is unable to get the national NLRB to overturn the union's bid, it could appeal to federal court.
“It's time for the era of amateurism to end,” Dartmouth basketball representatives Cade Haskins and Romeo Mircil said in a statement released just before the vote. “We call on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees and President Beilock to live the truth of her own words and foster a 'brave space' where 'changing your mind based on new evidence is a good thing.' .”
The unionization of college athletes is an important moment in sports law, but student Forming a union as a school employee is nothing new. Some of the Dartmouth players' classmates are unionized food service workers who negotiate terms of employment with the school. SEIU praised the players' choices.
“These young men will go down as one of the greatest basketball teams in history,” SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry said in a statement. “The Ivy League is where the entire scandalous model of near-free labor in college sports was born and is where it will die.” Dartmouth is 5-21 overall this season and 1-11 in the Ivy League. The team concludes its schedule against Harvard University on Tuesday night.
The university said it opposed the vote, emphasizing the academic nature of its mission. “For Ivy League students who are varsity athletes, academics are of paramount importance and athletic pursuits are part of the educational experience,” a university spokesperson said in a statement. “It is both unprecedented and inaccurate to classify these students as employees simply because they play basketball. Therefore, we believe that unionization is appropriate. I’m not thinking about it.”
Unless the NLRB approves a suspension pending Dartmouth's appeal to the board, the school will likely need to negotiate in good faith with the players' association regarding mandatory employment in the near future. These subjects include wages, working hours, and other conditions such as procedures for disciplining athletes, safety requirements, support services, insurance, and health care.
Depending on the terms of the negotiations, Dartmouth's athletics department could be deemed ineligible under NCAA and Ivy League rules that limit how schools can compensate athletes. For example, if Dartmouth and the players' union agreed to a limit of 20 hours per week, that would be consistent with the NCAA's general limit on countable athletic-related activities.
Dartmouth has also raised other concerns about unionization, including the potential negative impact on foreign athletes who register through visas. Meanwhile, players as employees may continue to comply with visa restrictions, including potentially being recognized as joint employees of the conference and the NCAA.
Some have speculated that Dartmouth will simply fire the basketball team rather than negotiate with the players. It's an unlikely move because the players would then claim the school committed unfair labor practices by retaliating and refusing to negotiate.
The vote comes as the NCAA and its amateurism system face various legal challenges. The NCAA is being forced to lift restrictions on universities in order to compensate athletes and bring college sports closer to a free market similar to professional sports. These challenges also could result in billions of dollars in damages for the NCAA and its members, reflecting unpaid player wages, canceled broadcast revenue sharing, waived NIL contracts, unproduced video games, and more. It threatens to be sexual.
Dartmouth is an unlikely place to propel college sports into a world where athletes are employees. The school claims Big Green consistently runs deficits. Dartmouth isn't exactly a pipeline to the NBA. And Ivy League athletes don't receive athletic scholarships.
But as SEIU 560 attorney John Krupski argued at a hearing last fall, and as NLRB Regional Director Laura Sachs wrote in a Feb. 5 order, the players have no legal right to Based on the information provided, they are employees within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act. At issue is Dartmouth's ability to control its players and the players they play in exchange for compensation, including preferential admission to elite universities and access to training facilities.
Dartmouth on Tuesday challenged Sacks' Feb. 5 order through a 58-page petition for review. The school claims Sachs misapplied the law and based his decision on an incomplete factual record. Last Friday, Sachs denied Dartmouth's motion to reopen the case, which would have delayed the vote.
Appeals will be heard by the agency's five-member board, but there is currently one vacancy. There is no timeline for how long it will take the board to make a decision, but a decision is expected to take several months. In 2014, when Northwestern University appealed the regional board's finding that football players were employees, the board took about 16 months to issue a decision. Dartmouth's overall review process could take several years, as the board's decisions could be challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals and ultimately in the U.S. Supreme Court.
One factor working in Dartmouth's players' favor is that the Ivy League is made up entirely of private universities. These eight universities are subject to his NLRA, which administers private employers. In contrast, employment at public universities is regulated by state law. Northwestern's lack of football players stemmed from the NLRB's displeasure with players from other Big Ten schools (all public schools) remaining non-employees while Wildcats players became employees. This is also a factor.
If Dartmouth players are employees, the same would likely be granted to athletes at other Ivy League schools if they applied for employment certification. To facilitate that process, it is expected that an Ivy League Players Association will be formed to represent players from other Ivy schools, become employees, and help form a union.
An ongoing administrative law hearing against USC, the Pac-12, and the NCAA, who are collectively accused of misclassifying Trojan football and basketball players as “student-athletes,” along with the Dartmouth men's basketball team. There are several other related NLRB lawsuits, including . ” The unfair labor practice case is before an NLRB administrative law judge in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the labor agency's local offices in Chicago and Indianapolis are investigating separate complaints filed by the College Basketball Players Association against Northwestern University and the NCAA.
Athletes at other private universities may similarly petition for employment recognition and unionization. If Dartmouth players are employees because they play in exchange for school control and compensation, the same could be true for other players. The situation is different for athletes at public universities. Their ability to obtain employment certification depends on state law, and some states make employment status, particularly unionization, more difficult.
Dartmouth players close out the season tonight by hosting the Harvard Crimson at Edward Reed Arena. Tip-off is at 7 p.m.
(This article has been updated with details of the appeal process in the third paragraph and Dartmouth's statement in the eighth paragraph.)
—With assistance from Daniel Rivitt.
