The Dartmouth men’s basketball team requested the withdrawal of its petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Tuesday, abruptly ending the players’ push to earn contracts.
Service Employees International Union Local 560, the union representing the players, filed a request to withdraw the NLRB petition early Tuesday, and the board’s regional director granted that request later in the day, marking the case status as “closed.”
The move is being made in order to avoid potential legal and political risks in anticipation of personnel changes within the NRLB following the inauguration of President Donald Trump later this month.
There is concern that Trump will replace the NLRB’s General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, with someone who is less likely to advocate for the recognition of college athletes as employees.
In a 2021 memo, Abruzzo said college athletes should be considered employees.
“The freedom to engage in far-reaching and lucrative business enterprises makes players at academic institutions much more similar to professional athletes who are employed by a team to play a sport,” Abruzzo wrote.
Additionally, the union and players acknowledge that the NLRB’s five-person board is in a state of flux and could become less favorable to their cause. There are two open positions, and if Trump’s nominees gain those two spots, the Republicans will have a 3-2 majority, making the risk of losing at the board level a lot higher for Dartmouth, according to Sportico.
In February 2024, the NLRB ruled that the Dartmouth basketball players were employees under U.S. law, and then one month later, the team voted in favor of unionizing.
“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, adding that collective bargaining is “the only viable pathway to address issues” facing college athletics today.
“By filing a request to withdraw our petition today, we seek to preserve the precedent set by this exceptional group of young people on the men’s varsity basketball team,” Peck said.
“They have pushed the conversation on employment and collective bargaining in college sports forward and made history by being classified as employees, winning their union election 13-2, and becoming the first certified bargaining unit of college athletes in the country.”
The Dartmouth case threatened to upend the NCAA’s amateurism model, which has slowly been chipped away at with the development of NIL profits and the pending settlement in the House v. NCAA case.
There remains a separate NLRB complaint seeking football and basketball players at USC to be deemed employees of their school and the NCAA.
Even the prospect of Trump’s presidency, with his demonstrated antipathy towards unions, was enough to trigger this reply. Yet the NCAA’s days are numbered, at least as that organization currently exists and operates.
Everybody can hate on the NCAA, if they wish—but SOMEBODY has to manage college athletics unless everyone thinks the current chaotic, seedy mess is what it should be about. And apparently some feckless judges and a few others do. The NFL, NBA and all other pro sports have far more player and league rules than college athletics, which right now seems to have no rules. It’s “anything goes” and every man for himself.
If I were the president of the Dartmouth, my response to the effort by the basketball players to unionize would have been to call the group into my office and tell them: “I think your desire to unionize is self-centered and foolish. You have the opportunity to… Read more »