The Dartmouth men’s basketball team has voted to form the first labor union for college athletes in an unprecedented move that is yet another blow to the NCAA’s deteriorating amateur business model.
Dartmouth Basketball Team Unionizes
The Associated Press reported that the players voted 13-2 to join Service Employees International Union Local 560 in an election that was overseen by the National Labor Relations Board at Dartmouth’s human resources office.
“Today is a big day for our team,” said Dartmouth juniors Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil, who are the players that led the effort. “We stuck together all season and won this election.”
“It is self-evident that we, as students, can also be both campus workers and union members,” they added. “Dartmouth seems to be stuck in the past. It’s time for the age of amateurism to end.”
Dartmouth Fires Back
Dartmouth officials had previously warned that unionizing could get the team kicked out of the Ivy League, or even the NCAA. The school responded to the unionization by issuing a statement saying that while it supports the five unions it negotiates with on campus, including this one, players are still students, not employees.
“For Ivy League students who are varsity athletes, academics are of primary importance, and athletic pursuit is part of the educational experience,” school officials said. “Classifying these students as employees simply because they play basketball is as unprecedented as it is inaccurate. We, therefore, do not believe unionization is appropriate.”
Dartmouth has appealed to the full NLRB in the hopes of overturning a decision by the board’s regional officials that students are employees. The case could end up in federal court as it moves forward.
“I think this is just the start,” Haskins said of the unionization. “I think this is going to have a domino effect on other cases across the country, and that could lead to other changes.”
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NCAA Responds
The NCAA issued a statement saying that it still believes that athletes are students first.
“The association believes change in college sports is long overdue and is pursuing significant reforms,” the governing body said. “However, there are some issues the NCAA cannot address alone, and the association looks forward to working with Congress to make needed changes in the best interest of all student-athletes.”
After the unionization, the Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark applauded the Dartmouth basketball players “for their courage and leadership in the movement to establish and advance the rights of college athletes.”
“By voting to unionize, these athletes have an unprecedented seat at the table and a powerful voice with which to negotiate for rights and benefits that have been ignored for far too long,” he said.
“These young men will go down as one of the greatest basketball teams in all of history,” added SEIU international president Mary Kay Henry. “The Ivy League is where the whole scandalous model of nearly free labor in college sports was born and that is where it is going to die.”
Dan Hurley, the coach of the defending national champion UConn men’s team, spoke out to say that he thinks unionization and treating players as employees is the future of college basketball.
“These players are putting in incredible work days, work weeks for five, six months,” he said. “I think there’s so much there that’s going to have to be settled.”
It will certainly be interesting to see how this case develops moving forward.
