The Dartmouth College men’s basketball team voted to unionize on Tuesday, the first time a college sports team has elected to join a union in the United States. Experts say that the decision, which Dartmouth has vowed to appeal, has been a long time coming—and could have huge impacts on the ways college athletes are compensated across the country.
Forward Cade Haskins and guard Romeo Myrthil announced their intentions to unionize last September, arguing that policies like the basketball team’s restrictive practice schedules and the profits that Dartmouth makes from the basketball program meant players should be treated as employees—and compensated like employees.
After months of back-and-forth with the National Labor Relations Board, the team voted 13-2 in favor of joining the SEIU Local 560 on Tuesday. The vote could open the door for similar unionization efforts across the country, which would be a big blow to the NCAA’s business model—but not if the NCAA itself has a say in the matter.
“It seems almost inevitable that Dartmouth College, with a lot of compulsion from the NCAA, will appeal this decision,” Marc Edelman, a sports law professor at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business, told Fortune after the NLRB allowed a union vote last month.
Dartmouth has already made its opposition clear. The union vote was held Tuesday despite objections from the Trustees of Dartmouth College, who filed an emergency motion to halt the election last week.(The NLRB rejected the motion on Tuesday.) Now that the vote is final, the college has five business days to file any objections to it.
Currently, Dartmouth student-athletes (and all other NCAA student-athletes across the country) are unpaid. While some athletes at other schools receive scholarships covering tens of thousands of dollars in expenses such as tuition and housing fees, Dartmouth students don’t, because athletic scholarships are banned at all Ivy League schools. And no Dartmouth student-athletes receive a regular paycheck in exchange for the time they spend practicing, traveling, and competing in their sport. Most athletes are also responsible for any sports injuries they incur through their own health insurance.
As of June 2021, college athletes have been allowed to make money by licensing their name or likeness through so-called NIL deals after a unanimous Supreme Court ruling. But so far, collecting a paycheck in exchange for competing in their sport has remained out of reach. That could be set to change—as part of the SEIU Local 560, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team would be eligible to collectively bargain with the university for things like wages and health benefits.
The NLRB ruled last month that the team was eligible to hold a union vote in February, finding that the players fit the legal definition of employees.
“I was not at all surprised by the [February] ruling,” said Edelman.“If you look at the realities of big-time football and big-time men’s basketball, even within the Ivy League schools, it seems to meet the definition of employee.”
Dartmouth contested that assertion, arguing that the school doesn’t profit from the basketball program—it actually loses money on its athletics programs. And because it doesn’t give out athletic scholarships, students have no barriers preventing them from quitting the team if they feel the schedule is too demanding, it says.
“Unlike other institutions where athletics generates millions of dollars in net revenue, the costs of Dartmouth’s athletics program far exceed any revenue from the program—costs that Dartmouth bears as part of our participation in the Ivy League,” a Dartmouth spokesperson said in an email to Fortune. “Dartmouth has a long and proud history of productive relationships with unions on campus, always negotiates in good faith when appropriate, and respects the rights of workers to unionize. However, we do not believe these students are employees.”
The NCAA, the nonprofit organization that regulates collegiate sports in the United States, has warned that if student-athletes nationwide were classified as employees, it would ruin the entire business model of college sports. NCAA President Charlie Baker cautioned last month that widespread unionization could harm the 95 percent of athletes who compete for schools that lose money on their sports programs, and that action from Congress was needed to protect the NCAA.
“I think in the end, we are going to need Congress to do something,” Baker said. “Because people will draw a lot of conclusions from court decisions. And then there will be new ones.”
Similar unionization efforts have fizzled out in the past. In 2015, the NLRB rejected an attempt by the Northwestern University football team to call for a union vote. But Edelman said that the players on the Dartmouth team were uniquely well-positioned to get approval from the NLRB and pass a union vote.
“You are dealing with very intelligent, formally educated and traditionally experienced young men,” said Edelman. “[They] are disproportionately likely to have college-educated parents who may reasonably be more mindful of their legal rights, and [they’re] less likely to be intimidated by athletic directors or coaches attempting to threaten them against exercising their rights.”
Even if Dartmouth or the NCAA successfully challenges the team’s decision and prevents them from entering into collective bargaining, the vote could lay the groundwork for similar movements at different schools across the country.
“We call on other athletes here at Dartmouth, across the Ivy League, and the country to follow this story and join us on the journey to improve the conditions for college athletes everywhere,” wrote Haskins and Myrthil in the Dartmouth student newspaper last September. “We are available to any athlete interested in getting more information on how to form a union…Coll ege athletes will finally have the chance to have an equal voice regarding their working conditions.”
