He explained the Dartmouth Basketball Association effort: how we got here and what's next

In a massive step for the rights of college athletes, the Dartmouth men's basketball team voted 13-2 on Tuesday to form a union.

The historic election was the latest event to challenge the fundamental principles of the NCAA, which has long prided itself on protecting the concept of amateurism in team sports. Now, the landscape appears set for change, as the NCAA has been embroiled in several simultaneous legal battles regarding its relationship with athletes.

While the unionization process is still far from complete, Tuesday's vote could signal a turning point as the decision reverberates throughout the college sports landscape.

So, how did we get here, where are we at, and what's next? Here's what you should know.

How we got to vote on Tuesday

The broader push to treat college athletes as employees has been rampant for years, but this specific effort took off last September, when 15 Dartmouth men's basketball players petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to unionize through its chapter of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), based in New England, is a labor union that represents approximately 2 million workers across the United States and Canada.

The school opposed the move, but in February, the NLRB's regional director, Laura Sachs, ruled that players are employees and can move forward with their election to unionize.

The Sachs ruling held that the Dartmouth players are employees because they perform work that benefits the school, the school has significant control over their work and the players receive compensation through equipment, housing, tickets and other means.

“Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men's basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I find that the petitioner basketball players are employees within the meaning of the statute,” Sachs wrote. .

Why are Dartmouth players uniting?

The union will allow players to negotiate collectively with Dartmouth regarding wages, scheduling, policies and other terms related to playing.

“Obviously, as students, we can also be campus workers and union members,” Dartmouth players Cade Haskins and Romeo Merthel, both juniors on the team, said regarding Tuesday's vote.

“Dartmouth seems stuck in the past. It is time for the era of amateurism to end,” Haskins and Myrtle said in a statement. “We call on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees and President Belloc to live out the truth of her words and cultivate “courageous spaces” in which “changing one’s mind is based on new evidence.” “Good thing.”

They added that they want to “create a less exploitative business model for college sports” and will continue to talk to other Dartmouth and Ivy League athletes about forming unions and working together to advocate for the rights and well-being of athletes in the coming months.

Didn't this happen at Northwestern?

In 2014, Northwestern football players also sued the unions and won a similar ruling at the regional level, but their case was overturned at the national level because the NLRB ruled it could not assert jurisdiction.

Because the NLRB applies only to the private sector, state-run schools are not subject to its decisions. The NLRB decided in 2015 that because Northwestern was in the Big Ten, which at the time was a conference full of public schools, a national ruling on players' ability to unionize would not promote stability in labor relations because of the state's diversity. Labor laws within the conference footprint.

The key difference this time: Dartmouth is a member of the all-private Ivy League, which wouldn't have the same competitive equity case to achieve what the Big Ten did.

What could Tuesday's vote mean for college athletes outside of Dartmouth?

While Tuesday's vote does not open the door for all other college athletes to be considered employees, it does serve as an important step in one of several potentially high-profile athletes' rights cases across the country.

like The athlete“A victory for the Dartmouth players’ unionization effort could spur other private schools in conferences with a more diverse membership than the Ivy League’s own league to organize,” Nicole Auerbach wrote in a recent article examining the implications of athletes becoming employees.

Where else is the labor battle taking place?

Auerbach also previously noted that the Dartmouth ruling could be cited in various ongoing lawsuits across the country related to the status of college athletes. She noted that neither Johnson v. NCAA (the debate over whether athletes are hourly wage employees), nor House v. NCAA (the fight for back wages would resemble the name and image of athletes who competed before 2021). ) or an NLRB case in California could all be turned upside down. The business of college athletics.

In this NLRB case in California, if the ongoing trial on unfair labor practice charges affirms that USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA should be considered joint employers of athletes, that could allow all college athletes to unionize, regardless of which state they are from. They live in or the type of school they go to.

What then?

Following Tuesday's vote, Dartmouth filed for review by the NLRB. This review, and a potential appeal to federal court afterward, may mean that formal union recognition and collective bargaining is still months away.

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(Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)