The Dartmouth men’s basketball team dropped its attempt to form a union on Tuesday, voluntarily ending a push to become the first college sports team to unionize in order to avoid a potentially damaging precedent from a National Labor Relations Board that soon will be controlled by Republicans.
Lawyers for Service Employees International Union Local 560 withdrew their NLRB petition on Tuesday rather than take their chances in front of an unfriendly labor board.
“While our strategy is shifting, we will continue to advocate for just compensation, adequate health coverage, and safe working conditions for varsity athletes at Dartmouth," SEIU Local 560 President Chris Peck said in a statement that called collective bargaining “the only viable pathway to address issues” facing college athletics today.
The Dartmouth players petitioned the NLRB in 2023 to be allowed to unionize, saying the New Hampshire school exercised so much control over their schedules and working conditions that they met the legal definition of employees. A regional official agreed, and the team voted 13-2 in March to join SEIU Local 560, which already represents some Dartmouth workers.
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The school could not immediately be reached for comment. Dartmouth had previously said it would refuse to bargain with the players in an attempt to force the case into federal court.
“Athletes in the Ivy League are not employees,” the school said in March, calling them “students whose educational program includes athletics.”
A college athletes union would be unprecedented in American sports. A previous attempt to unionize the Northwestern football team failed because opponents in the Big Ten Conference include public schools that aren’t under the jurisdiction of the NLRB. A separate NLRB complaint is asking that football and basketball players at Southern California be deemed employees of their school, the Pac-12 conference and the NCAA.
