BOSTON (AP) — Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team is abandoning its attempt at unionization, ending its attempt to become the first college athlete to negotiate a contract to avoid a potentially damaging precedent set by a National Labor Relations Board that will soon be controlled by Republicans.
The Service Employees International Union Local 560 filed a motion Tuesday to withdraw the NLRB petition rather than risk going to an unfriendly labor board.
“As our strategy changes, we will continue to advocate for fair compensation, adequate health insurance and safe working conditions for Dartmouth’s collegiate athletes,” local president Chris Peck said in a statement, calling collective bargaining “the only viable path forward “designated issues” facing college athletics today.
The Dartmouth players petitioned the labor board in 2023 for the right to unionize, saying the New Hampshire school exercised so much control over its schedule and working conditions that it met the legal definition of an employee. A regional official agreed, and the team voted 13-2 in March to join SEIU Local 560, which already represents some Dartmouth workers.
The school said it would refuse to negotiate with the players to take the case to federal court. Before players sit down at the negotiating table, they need positive decisions from an NLRB that currently has two vacancies that will be filled by President-elect Donald Trump after his Jan. 20 inauguration.
A Dartmouth spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment. The school had previously said “athletes in the Ivy League are not employees” and called them “students whose educational program includes athletics.”
Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil, the two Dartmouth players who initiated the union effort, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Assocaited Press.
“By filing a motion to withdraw our petition today, we want to preserve the precedent set by this extraordinary group of young people on the men’s basketball team,” Peck said. “They moved the conversation about employment and collective bargaining in college sports forward and made history by being classified as employees, winning their union election 13-2 and becoming the first certified bargaining unit for college athletes in the country.”
The Dartmouth case threatened to upend the NCAA’s amateur model, in which players are considered “student-athletes” who went to school primarily to study. As college sports have grown into a multibillion-dollar industry that richly rewards coaches and schools, players have gone unpaid.
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. The NCAA has lobbied Congress to keep the amateur model, an approach that becomes more likely with Republican control.
A college athletes union would be unprecedented in American sports. A previous attempt to unionize the Northwestern football team failed because Big Ten Conference opponents included public schools not under the NLRB’s jurisdiction. 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.
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Jimmy Golen covers sports and law for The Associated Press.
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AP College Basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball
