The Dartmouth men's basketball team voted 13-2 Tuesday to join its local service employees union, marking the first time a group of college athletes has taken public action as employees of their school and potentially setting a precedent that could significantly disrupt the university's business. Sports.
Last month, a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the Dartmouth players were employees of their school. Tuesday's vote was the players' first official action as employees and the next step toward negotiating with the school. Players say they hope other Ivy League teams do the same to create a conference-wide collective bargaining unit.
The university filed its appeal of the regional director's decision Tuesday afternoon. The school could potentially continue fighting the idea that athletes are employees all the way to the Supreme Court, a process that could take years to complete. In a statement Tuesday, the university strongly disagreed with players being classified as employees.
“For Ivy League students who are collegiate athletes, academics are of primary importance and athletic activity is part of the educational experience,” the statement said. “Classifying these students as employees simply because they play basketball is unprecedented and inaccurate.”
Dartmouth's administration filed a motion last week to try to delay Tuesday's vote, but was unsuccessful. The public results of the vote mean that players are now at least one step further in their process than Northwestern University football players went in 2015 in what was previously the most notable push to unionize athletes in modern college sports.
The Dartmouth players' effort is one of several developing legal challenges to the NCAA's long-standing principle that college athletes are not professionals. NCAA President Charlie Baker told ESPN in a recent interview that he believes many colleges want to provide more benefits to their athletes, but neither the schools nor most of the players he asked wanted to be considered employees. .
“The student-athlete advisory boards that we work with have basically said, 'We are fully committed to compensation. We believe that [name, image and likeness deals] They are a great thing. Enhanced educational benefits could be really important for a lot of us,'” Baker told ESPN last month. “But employment? “That's not where they want to land.”
Dartmouth basketball players became the first to formally refute Baker's claim with their vote Tuesday. The NLRB's decision in the Dartmouth case creates a precedent that could apply to all college athletes at private universities. The federal agency does not have jurisdiction over employment issues in government institutions, which would include athletes in public schools.
However, the NLRB's Los Angeles regional office is in the process of reviewing a case that could open the door for all college athletes to unionize. In that case, the petitioner argues that USC athletes are jointly employed by their school, their conference, and the NCAA. Because college conferences and the NCAA are private institutions, a ruling in that case could open the door for all athletes to collectively negotiate with the association or its conference.
The Los Angeles case is scheduled to resume later this spring, and the regional director is likely to issue an initial ruling at the end of the current academic year.
While Dartmouth and others fight the labor situation in legal proceedings, Baker and many other college sports leaders are calling on Congress to create a new federal law that would declare college athletes not employees of their schools. They say employee status will complicate life for athletes and make it difficult for many university athletic departments to continue funding all of their teams. Despite several years of lobbying and 10 different hearings on Capitol Hill, Congress has failed to make significant progress on any legislation related to college sports.
While Baker opposes employee status, he told ESPN that some form of player association or organization for athletes to advocate for change could be “hugely positive” for college sports.
Legal experts say that without federal intervention, schools will likely have to decide in the coming years whether to treat their athletes as employees or make significant changes to reduce the amount of control that coaches and athletic departments have over their athletes' daily lives. athletes. . The NLRB's definition of employment only requires that an employer have the right to control an individual's work and that the work be performed in exchange for some form of compensation.
In the case of Dartmouth, regional director Laura Sacks decided that the players are employees even though they do not receive athletic scholarships or generate large profits like other basketball programs because of the strict control that coaches and athletic department officials have over time. and the players' time. conduct. Sacks ruled that the free clothing, tickets and other support they receive, which non-athletes at Dartmouth do not receive, qualified as her compensation.
Dartmouth, currently in last place in the Ivy League, defeated the Harvard Crimson 76-69 on Tuesday night in its final regular-season game.
