Dartmouth men's basketball votes to form union, still faces major barriers
Players for the Dartmouth College men's Basketball team voted to unionize on Tuesday.
Players for the Dartmouth College men’s Basketball team voted to unionize on Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, Dartmouth men’s basketball team players voted 13-2 to join Service Employees International Union Local 560 in an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.
Dartmouth juniors Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil, who led the effort, called the successful vote a “big day for our team.”
”We stuck together all season and won this election. It is self-evident that we, as students, can also be both campus workers and union members. Dartmouth seems to be stuck in the past. It’s time for the age of amateurism to end,” they said.
[RELATED: Dartmouth basketball team can unionize, government official states]
While the players voted to form a union, major barriers are still in place.
Dartmouth previously told the players that a vote to unionize could result in the team being kicked out of the Ivy League conference, or the NCAA as a whole.
In a statement, Dartmouth said that players are students and not employees.
“For Ivy League students who are varsity athletes, academics are of primary importance, and athletic pursuit is part of the educational experience,” the college said. “Classifying these students as employees simply because they play basketball is as unprecedented as it is inaccurate. We, therefore, do not believe unionization is appropriate.”
The vote came after a National Labor Relations Board regional official ruled in February that Dartmouth College basketball players are considered employees, as Campus Reform reported.
In September, all 15 players on the Dartmouth men’s basketball team signed a petition seeking to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, according to the Associated Press.
NLRB Regional Director Laura Sacks wrote in her decision previously. that the basketball players are employees since they perform work in exchange for compensation.
“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 petitioned-for basketball players are employees within the meaning of the (National Labor Relations) Act,” Sacks wrote.
