HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — The Dartmouth men's basketball team voted to unionize Tuesday. This is an unprecedented move to create the first union for college athletes and another blow to the NCAA's deteriorating amateur business model.
In a vote overseen by the National Labor Relations Board in the school's human resources offices, players voted 13-2 to join the Service Employees International Union Local 560, which already represents some Dartmouth workers. Every player on the squad voted.
“Today is a big day for our team,” said Dartmouth juniors Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil, who led the effort. “We stuck together all season and won this election. It goes without saying that as students we can be both campus employees and union members. Dartmouth seems stuck in the past. It’s time for the age of amateurism to end.”
The school has appealed to the full NLRB, seeking to overturn the board's regional clerk's decision last month that the Dartmouth players were employees and therefore eligible to join a union. Both sides also have until March 12 to file an objection to the election process with the NLRB; Otherwise, the local representative will be certified as the collective bargaining representative of the employees.
Members of an Ivy League school's men's basketball team have voted to unionize. Correspondent Gethin Coolbaugh has the story.
The case could also end up in federal court, which would likely delay negotiations on a collective bargaining agreement until long after current members of the basketball team graduate.
Dartmouth had told students that unionization could result in the team being kicked out of the Ivy League or even the NCAA. In a statement, the school said it supports the five unions it is negotiating with on campus, including SEIU Local 560, but stressed that the players are students, not employees.
“For Ivy League students who are collegiate athletes, academic achievement is of paramount importance and athletic participation is part of the educational experience,” the school said in a statement. “Classifying these students as employees simply because they play basketball is as unprecedented as it is inaccurate. We therefore do not believe that unionization is appropriate.”
ATHLETES OR EMPLOYEES?
Although the NCAA has long maintained that its players were “student-athletes” who went to school primarily to learn, college sports have become a multibillion-dollar industry that rewards coaches and schools handsomely while players remain unpaid amateurs .
Recent court decisions have weakened this framework, allowing players to profit from their name, image and likeness and receive a still-limited living stipend beyond the cost of participation. Last month's ruling that Big Green players are employees of the school and have the right to form a union threatens to upend the amateur model.
“I think this is just the beginning,” Haskins said after the vote. “I think this will have a domino effect on other cases across the country and that could lead to further changes.”
In a statement, the NCAA maintained its view that the athletes are primarily students.
“The association is convinced that changes in university sports are long overdue and is striving for significant reforms,” the umbrella organization said. “However, there are some issues that the NCAA cannot resolve alone, and the association looks forward to working with Congress to make the necessary changes in the best interests of all student-athletes.”
A separate NLRB complaint demands that football and basketball players in Southern California be considered employees of their school, the Pac-12 Conference and the NCAA. Marc Edelman, a law professor at Baruch College in New York, said that even if Dartmouth prevails in its attempts to prevent players from unionizing, it is unlikely that similar moves will be stopped at high-profile, revenue-generating college sports programs.
“It does not seem likely to rule out the possibility that the football and basketball teams at schools within conferences like the SEC and Big Ten will continue to attempt to form a union,” Edelman said.
THE DARTMOUTH DECISION
The election in Dartmouth lasted about an hour. Players reported before NLRB officials declared voting closed at 1 p.m. After media and observers from both sides were allowed into the room, Dartmouth attorney Josh Grubman renewed the school's request to seize the ballots until all appeals could be decided; it was rejected.
NLRB agent Hilary Bede then pulled packing tape from the brown cardboard, removed the ballots and held up the deconstructed box to show it was empty. She then sorted the folded yellow ballots into “yes” and “no” piles, checked them for irregularities and then counted them individually.
(The team didn't wait for the count: There was a shootaround at 2 p.m. to prepare for Tuesday night's game against Harvard. Dartmouth, in last place in the Ivy League, defeated the Crimson 76-69, scoring only his second conference win of the season.)
Although all 15 players signed a letter supporting the effort, union officials said the 13-2 vote still represented a clear victory. Tony Clark, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, praised the players “for their courage and leadership in the movement to establish and advance the rights of college athletes.”
“By agreeing to unionize, these athletes will have an unprecedented seat at the table and a powerful voice with which to negotiate rights and benefits that have been ignored for far too long,” he said.
THE POTENTIAL IMPACT
A college athletes union would be unprecedented in American sports. A previous attempt to unionize Northwestern's football team failed because Big Ten opponents included public schools that are not under the NLRB's jurisdiction.
That's why one of the biggest threats to the NCAA isn't playing one of the major football programs like Alabama or Michigan, which are almost indistinguishable from professional sports teams. Instead, it is the Ivy League, founded in 1954 by eight elite academic schools in the Northeast, whose players receive no athletic scholarships, whose teams play in sparsely filled gymnasiums and whose games are streamed online rather than broadcast on network television.
“These young men will go down as one of the greatest basketball teams in history,” said Mary Kay Henry, SEIU international president. “The Ivy League is where the whole scandalous model of near-free labor in college sports was born, and that’s where it will die.”
Dan Hurley, the coach of the reigning national champion UConn men's team, said he believes the future of college basketball lies in unionization and treating players as employees.
“These players put in incredible workdays, workweeks for five, six months,” he said. “I think there’s still so much to sort out.”
Haskins, a 6-foot-10 forward from Minneapolis, is already a member of the SEIU chapter as a dining room clerk, working 10 to 15 hours a week on a 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift to earn pocket money; Myrthil, a 6-foot-2 guard from Solna, Sweden, has a part-time job checking people into the gym. They said their top negotiating priority was health insurance so they wouldn't have to pay out-of-pocket costs for their injuries.
“I play a sport that I love and I'm grateful to play it,” said Haskins, who suffered an ankle injury and a torn labrum in his hip and shoulder. “But it’s definitely a burden.”
Myrthil and Haskins said they have heard from students at virtually every conference in the country to learn more about their unionization efforts. They have said they would like to create an Ivy League Players Association that would include athletes from other sports on campus and other schools in the conference.
But they realize this move may come too late to benefit them and their current teammates: four seniors, five juniors, three sophomores and three freshmen.
“We are confident in the group we have now. But it depends on how long it takes,” said Myrthil. “We'll see. Next year we'll talk to our freshmen and introduce them to the idea and what it means. And then hopefully it will be passed on. And I'm pretty confident that it will be.”
___
AP College Sports Writer Ralph D. Russo and AP Sports Writer Pat Eaton-Robb contributed. Jimmy Golen covers sports and law for The Associated Press.
___
AP College Basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball