On their campus in Hanover, N.H., Dartmouth College men's basketball players voted 13-2 on Tuesday to join the Service Employees International Union Local 560, marking a milestone in the sometimes gray history of amateurism in collegiate athletics.
As reported by The Associated Press, the vote was made under the supervision of the National Labor Relations Board.
“This is definitely a milestone that has been reached. One that we believe should have been reached long ago,” said Ramogi Huma, a longtime advocate for college athletes who helped organize a movement to unionize Northwestern football players a decade ago.
"As with Dartmouth basketball, a regional ruling by the NLRB cleared the way for a vote by the Northwestern football team to unionize," the AP's Ralph Russo wrote. "However, the votes were impounded and never revealed after the full board in 2015 dismissed the argument that the players were employees of the private Big Ten school. Rules have changed since, allowing the result of the Dartmouth players’ vote to be made public while the school appeals."
On Monday, NLRB regional director Laura Sacks denied the school’s request to reopen the case, saying there was no new evidence that wasn’t previously available to Dartmouth.
“In issuing her decision, the Regional Director made an unprecedented, unwarranted, and unsupported departure from every applicable Supreme Court, federal court and Board precedent and created a new definition of ‘employee’ in a manner that not only exceeded her authority but promises to have significant labor and public policy implications,” the school wrote in its request for a ruling by the full NLRB board.
The case could ultimately end up in federal court.
The NLRB only has jurisdiction over private employers, according to Russo. Dartmouth and Northwestern are private schools, as is the University of Southern California. Huma's National College Players Association has filed a separate complaint with the NLRB against USC, asking that the school’s football and basketball players be deemed employees.
“The case that we have at USC is stronger because the athletes there get full scholarships," Huma, who played football at UCLA, told the AP. "So the fact that athletes at Dartmouth that don’t get scholarships were deemed to be employees, I think it provides strength to our arguments at USC."
“First time we’ve seen this, we’ll see if it produces a wave,” said Jason Stahl, founder and executive director of the College Football Players Association, whose efforts two years ago to organize players and address the Big Ten Conference about working conditions, health care and potentially compensation fell apart. “If Dartmouth basketball players are employees, pretty much all college athletes seem like they’re employees and that could produce some really seismic ramifications not just for college athletics, but also for higher education writ large.”
Russo wrote, "Even if the Dartmouth players’ bid falls short, many believe it is a glimpse into the future of college sports, which is struggling to find structure and stability with mostly unregulated name, image and likeness compensation and unrestricted transfers."
