Dartmouth basketball players end historic bid to unionize
A poster of a basketball player is attached to a lamppost on the campus of Dartmouth College on March 5, 2024, in Hanover, New Hampshire. (Photo by Robert F. Bukaty/The Associated Press)
The men’s basketball team at Dartmouth College dropped its attempt to unionize Tuesday in anticipation of a changing the National Labor Relations Board under the new presidential administration.
The basketball players would have become the first college athletes to bargain for a labor contract. Under the NCAA’s current amateur model, athletes remain unpaid.
“While our strategy is shifting, we will continue to advocate for just compensation, adequate health coverage and safe working conditions for varsity athletes at Dartmouth,” said Chris Peck, president of the Service Employees International Union Local 560, which represents the Dartmouth players, in a statement.
The New York Times and the Associated Press have coverage.
The Dartmouth basketball players petitioned the NLRB for the right to unionize in 2023, contending that they met the legal definition of employees because their college exercised control over their schedules and working conditions, the AP reports. A regional NLRB office issued a decision allowing the players to vote on whether to unionize last February.
Dartmouth, however, refused to negotiate with the basketball players and appealed the ruling. The team had voted 13-2 to join the Service Employees International Union Local 560 following the ruling but decided to withdraw its petition instead of facing a Republican-leaning NLRB under President-elect Donald Trump.
“We seek to preserve the precedent set by this exceptional group of young people on the men’s varsity basketball team,” Peck said in his statement. “They have pushed the conversation on employment and collective bargaining in college sports forward and made history by being classified as employees, winning their union election 13-2, and becoming the first certified bargaining unit of college athletes in the country.”
Dartmouth characterized the decision to classify the basketball players as employees as “incorrect and not supported by legal precedent” in a statement published by the AP. The college also said it respects the unions in its campus community but “did not believe unionization was appropriate” in this instance.
Previous attempts to form labor unions in college athletics have failed. In 2015, the NLRB blocked the Northwestern University football team’s attempt to unionize because opponents in its conference included schools that weren’t under the agency’s jurisdiction, according to the AP.
