Dartmouth basketball unionization effort explained: How we got here and what’s next

In a massive step for college athlete rights, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team on Tuesday voted 13-2 in favor of forming a union.

The historic election was the latest event to challenge the bedrock principles of the NCAA, which has long prided itself on protecting the concept of amateurism in collegiate sports. Now, it appears the landscape is poised for a shakeup, with the NCAA engaged in several concurrent legal battles regarding its relationship with its athletes.

While the unionization process is far from complete, Tuesday’s vote could signal a tipping point as the decision reverberates throughout the college sports landscape.

So, how did we get here, where do things stand and what’s next? Here’s what to know.

How we got to Tuesday’s vote

The broader push for college athletes to be treated as employees has been percolating for years, but this specific effort got off the ground last September, when 15 Dartmouth men’s basketball players filed a petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to unionize through a New England-based chapter of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a labor union representing roughly 2 million workers across the U.S. and Canada.

The school opposed the move, but in February, NLRB regional director Laura Sacks ruled that the players are employees and could move forward with their election to unionize.

Sacks’ ruling held that the Dartmouth players are employees because they perform work that benefits the school, the school holds significant control over their work and players receive compensation through equipment, lodging, tickets and other means.

“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 Act,” Sacks wrote.

Why are Dartmouth’s players unionizing?

Unionization would allow the players to collectively negotiate with Dartmouth over pay, scheduling and other policies and conditions related to playing.

Dartmouth players Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil, both juniors on the team, said regarding Tuesday’s vote, “It is self-evident that we, as students, can also be both campus workers and union members.”

“Dartmouth seems to be stuck in the past. It’s time for the age of amateurism to end,” Haskins and Myrthil said in a statement. “We call on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees and President Beilock to live the truth of her own words and cultivate ‘brave spaces’ in which ‘changing one’s mind based on new evidence is a good thing.’”

They added that they wanted to “create a less exploitative business model for college sports” and would continue to speak to other Dartmouth and Ivy League athletes about forming unions and working together to advocate for athletes’ rights and well-being in the coming months.

Didn’t this happen at Northwestern?

In 2014, Northwestern football players also made a push to unionize and received a similar ruling at the regional level, but their case was overturned at the national level because the NLRB ruled it couldn’t assert its jurisdiction.

Because the NLRB only applies to the private sector, state-run schools are not subject to its decisions. The NLRB determined in 2015 that because Northwestern was in the Big Ten, which at the time was a conference otherwise full of state schools, a national ruling on the players’ ability to unionize would not promote stability in labor relations due to the variety of state labor laws within the conference footprint.

The key difference this time around: Dartmouth is a member of the all-private Ivy League, which will not have the same competitive equity case to make that the Big Ten did.

What could Tuesday’s vote mean for college athletes beyond Dartmouth?

While Tuesday’s vote doesn’t open the door for all other college athletes to be considered employees, it serves as an important step in one of several potential milestone athletes’ rights cases around the country.

As The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach wrote in a recent story examining the implications of athletes becoming employees, “A victory for the Dartmouth players’ unionization efforts could motivate other private schools in conferences with more diverse membership than the all-private Ivy League to organize themselves.”

Where else the labor fight is taking place

Auerbach also previously noted that the Dartmouth ruling could be cited in the various lawsuits in progress around the country related to the status of college athletes. She noted that any one of Johnson v. NCAA (arguing whether athletes are hourly wage employees), House v. NCAA (fighting for name-image-likeness back pay for athletes who competed before 2021) or the NLRB case in California could all upend the business of college athletics.

In that NLRB case in California, if an ongoing trial into an unfair labor practice charge confirms that USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA should be considered joint employers of athletes, that could allow all college athletes to unionize, regardless of the state they live in or type of school they attend.

What’s next?

In the wake of Tuesday’s vote, Dartmouth filed a request for review by the NLRB. That review, and a potential appeal to federal court after that, could mean that official recognition of the union and collective bargaining is still months away.

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(Photo: Scott Eisen / Getty Images)