Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: Dartmouth Men’s Basketball Makes History by Becoming First College Athletes to Join a Union
By: Max Grossfeld
Dartmouth Men’s Basketball is not a blue-blood program for its efforts on the court. The Big Green have not had a winning record since the 1998-1999 season and have not made an NCAA Tournament appearance since 1959. This year is no different. The team is ranked at the bottom of the Ivy League and is unlikely to change that standing by the end of the season. However, the team’s actions away from the court will forever cement Dartmouth’s place as a historic program. On March 5, 2024, Dartmouth became the first college basketball program to unionize in the history of college sports with a vote to join the Service Employees International Union.
This effort is not the first time that college athletes have attempted to unionize. In 2014, football players for the Northwestern University Wildcats petitioned to form a union. In that case, a regional director allowed the Northwestern players to vote on whether to unionize, but their ballots were impounded pending a ruling from the full National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The full board decided not to assert jurisdiction. The NLRB held that because Northwestern was the only private school in its football conference, allowing the Wildcats to unionize would not promote stability in labor relations. Instead, the NLRB found that the variety of state labor laws that would apply to teams at public universities would create, “. . . asymmetry of the labor relations regulatory regimes applicable to individual teams.” The Northwestern players’ ballots were destroyed, and the university never recognized the players’ union vote.
The tides have shifted significantly since that 2014 decision. For decades, the NCAA has referred to its players as “student-athletes” to emphasize that they are not employees. The NCAA has long maintained that preventing outside compensation preserves amateurism and did not allow any compensation, even scholarships, for the first 50 years of its existence. Finally, the NCAA allowed schools to pay athletes’ educational and incidental expenses. In 1976, the NCAA backtracked and banned payments of incidental expenses. This position did not change until 2021 when lawmakers in California approved the “Name, Image, and Likeness” framework, allowing college students to get paid for their own identity. Other states quickly followed suit, forcing the NCAA’s hand.
Another monumental change took place in 2021. NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo took aim at the NCAA’s designation for “student-athlete.” She deemed the term a violation of Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA) because it “. . . [leads student-athletes] to believe that they are not entitled to the Act’s protection, . . .” leading to a chilling effect on unionization efforts and other Section 7 protected activities.
Laura Sacks, the NLRB Regional Director in Dartmouth’s case, explained that, not only have the tides turned, but that the NRLB’s ruling in the Northwestern case left the door open for a private school like Dartmouth to unionize. Sacks noted that nothing in the Northwestern proceedings precluded her from finding that college athletes at private institutions are employees eligible for a union vote nor did it preclude her from finding that a single-team bargaining unit was appropriate.
Dartmouth will likely appeal Sacks’s decision, as university leaders have asked the NLRB for more time to consider that action. The vote and the outcome of that vote, however, will not be sealed as it was in Northwestern, and given the comments of the NLRB’s General Counsel, it seems unlikely that the NLRB will decline to grant jurisdiction in this case. In addition, all fifteen players signed the union cards to initiate this process, so it is unlikely this vote will fail. In its unionization attempt, the shot clock is off, and Dartmouth has the lead. All the team must do is run out the clock. Regardless of their success on the court this season, it appears the Big Green will become champions in the world of college athletes’ labor rights.