Players as Employees

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has determined that basketball players at Dartmouth are employees and thus can have union protections. From Politico:

The National Labor Relations Board on Monday green-lighted a union election for members of the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team, a decision with potentially seismic implications for the future of collegiate athletics.

Players on the team last year petitioned the NLRB to organize with a local arm of the powerhouse labor union SEIU that represents other groups at Dartmouth. Dartmouth, like other universities, has seen a recent rise of union activism on campus, which leaders of the effort to form a union for the basketball team have publicly cited as an inspiration.

The NLRB’s regional director in Boston, Laura Sacks, determined that the players are workers under the National Labor Relations Act and thus are eligible to unionize — in part because coaches and other school officials “control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation.”

Dartmouth argues that the financial assistance it offers athletes is need-based and disputes that it is compensation. Dartmouth, like all schools in the Ivy League, does not offer athletic scholarships...

Full story at https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/05/nlrb-union-election-dartmouth-00139737.

Note that UC schools, because they are public, do not fall under NLRB jurisdiction but rather are subject to the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). However, the statutory language covering UC is similar to the federal legislation giving the NLRB jurisdiction over the private sector. So, PERB's decision may be influenced by what the NLRB does, particularly in union-friendly California.

There will undoubtedly be legal challenges to the Dartmouth decision.