A National Labor Relations Board regional official ruled Monday that Dartmouth College men’s basketball players are university employees and ordered an election for them to unionize, according to the decision published on the NLRB website and cited by The Dartmouth independent student newspaper.
As reported by Will Dehmel of The Dartmouth, the team filed a petition to pursue unionization last September, becoming the first NCAA Division I team to do so in the NIL era. Monday’s ruling clears the way for an election whereby the team could create the first-ever labor union for NCAA athletes.
Laura Sacks, the Boston-based NLRB regional director, wrote in a 26-page decision that “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 find that the petitioned-for basketball players are employees within the meaning of the [National Labor Relations] Act.”
In an email statement, Dartmouth spokesperson Diana Lawrence wrote that the college will ask the board to review the decision, citing the lack of compensation that basketball players receive from the college. During hearings in October, Dartmouth's legal team argued that the players are not employees because the program loses several hundred thousand dollars a year.
“We are extremely proud of our varsity athletics program for the important values it promotes and the experience it provides for both our athletes and our broader community,” Lawrence wrote, as reported by The Dartmouth. “But it’s important to understand that unlike other institutions where athletics generates millions of dollars in net revenue, the costs of Dartmouth’s athletics program far exceed any revenue from the program — costs that Dartmouth bears as part of our participation in the Ivy League. We also do not compensate our athletes, nor do we provide athletic scholarships; all scholarships are based on financial need. For those reasons, among others, we believe firmly that unionization is not appropriate in this instance.”
Dartmouth, which maintains that student-athletes are not employees of the college, can appeal the regional director’s decision to that national board. This is what happened in 2014, when Northwestern University’s football team held a union election.
Sacks also wrote in the decision that “asserting jurisdiction would not create instability in labor relations” due to Dartmouth’s status as a private university.
To decide if team members want to be represented by Service Employees International Union Local 560 — which currently represents other Dartmouth employees — the NLRB will lead a secret ballot election. That list must be received by Wednesday by the regional director and each party, The Dartmouth reported.
"In essence, the decision changes the decades-old designation from 'student-athlete' to 'student-employee,' at least at Dartmouth," wrote Dennis Dodd of CBS. "That NLRB official decided the players should be compensated because of the labor they provide to the private Hanover, New Hampshire-based school.
"As such, Dartmouth players, [who] don't receive athletic scholarships, could collectively bargain for salary, working conditions such as practice times and travel arrangements."
Dodd adds that an appeal could take years and wind up before the Supreme Court, "but for now, it is another blow against the NCAA and its amateurism model."
