The National Labor Relations Board on Thursday certified a union to represent Dartmouth basketball players after the deadline passed for the school to object to the election.
Big Green players voted 13-2 on March 5 to join the Service Employees International Union Local 560 – the first ever labor union for college athletes.
The March 12 deadline was for objections about the election process; the school has appealed to the full board an NLRB regional official's decision that the players are school employees.
Barring a successful appeal, the players and school will negotiate a collective bargaining agreement that would cover working conditions such as salary, practice hours and health care benefits.
Although the NCAA has long maintained that players are “student-athletes” who were in school primarily to study, college sports has grown into a multibillion dollar industry that richly rewards the coaches and schools while the players remained unpaid amateurs.
Recent court decisions have chipped away at that model, with athletes now allowed to profit off their name, image and likeness. On Monday, Feb. 5 an NLRB official further damaged the NCAA model by agreeing with the Dartmouth basketball players that they were employees of the school, and thus entitled to unionize.
