Dartmouth hoops players end effort to unionize

Dec 31, 2024, 01:10 PM ET

BOSTON– The Dartmouth males’s basketball group dropped its attempt to form a union Tuesday, voluntarily ending a push to end up being the very first college sports team to unionize in order to prevent a potentially destructive precedent from a National Labor Relations Board that soon will be managed by Republicans.Lawyers for Service Worker International Union Local 560 withdrew their NLRB petition instead of take their possibilities in front of an unfriendly labor board.”While our strategy is moving, we will continue to advocate for simply compensation, appropriate health protection, and safe working conditions for university professional athletes at Dartmouth,” SEIU Local 560 president Chris Peck stated in a declaration that called cumulative bargaining”the only viable path to deal with concerns”dealing with college athletics today.The Dartmouth players petitioned the NLRB in 2023 to be allowed to unionize

, saying the New Hampshire school exercised a lot control over their schedules and working conditions that they fulfilled the legal meaning of employees. A local authorities agreed, and the team voted 13-2 in March to sign up with SEIU Resident 560, which already represents some Dartmouth workers.The school could not instantly be reached for comment. Dartmouth had formerly said it would refuse to deal with the players in an effort to force the case into federal court.”Athletes in the Ivy League are not employees,”the school stated in March, calling them”trainees whose curriculum consists of athletics.”A college athletes union would

be extraordinary in American sports. A previous effort to unionize the Northwestern football group stopped working due to the fact that challengers in the Big Ten Conference include public schools that aren’t under the jurisdiction of the NLRB. A separate NLRB grievance is asking that football and basketball players at USC be deemed employees of their school and the NCAA.