{"id":12042,"date":"2024-03-05T13:52:07","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T13:52:07","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"Labor-victory-for-Dartmouth-basketball-players-only-start-of-path-to-a-union-deal-54278809\/","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/?p=12042","title":{"rendered":"Dartmouth men\u2019s basketball team votes to unionize, though steps remain before forming labor union"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"FILE
FILE – Dartmouth’s Robert McRae III (23) takes a pass from Jackson Munro (33) as Duke’s Jaylen Blakes (2) defends during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Durham, N.C., Nov. 6, 2023. A National Labor Relations Board regional official has decided that Dartmouth basketball players are employees of the school, clearing the way for an election that would create the first-ever labor union for NCAA athletes. (AP Photo\/Ben McKeown, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Dartmouth
Dartmouth College guard Romeo Myrthil (20) drives against Penn’s Reese McMullen (24) during the Ivy League teams’ Feb. 23, 2024, meeting at Leede Arena in Hanover, N.H. Penn won, 82-69. (Valley News – Tris Wykes) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. \u2014Tris Wykes valley news photographs \u2014 Tris Wykes<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Dartmouth
Dartmouth College men\u2019s basketball teammates, from left, Isaiah Robinson, Robert McRae III and Cade Haskins listen to coaches during a timeout from their game with Westfield State at Leede Arena in Hanover, N.H., on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2023. McRae is a team captain and Haskins has made statements regarding their effort to join the SEIU Local 560. (Valley News – James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Dartmouth
Dartmouth guard Romeo Myrthil, middle, forward Brandon Mitchell-Day, left, and forward Jackson Munro, right, break up from a huddle during a pause in play with Westfield at Leede Arena in Hanover, N.H., on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2023. Myrthil is one of three players the team chose to speak about their unionization effort. (Valley News – James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"FILE
FILE – Dartmouth’s Romeo Myrthil (20) stands next to Duke’s Caleb Foster (1) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Durham, N.C., Monday, Nov. 6, 2023. A ruling that gives the Dartmouth basketball team the right to unionize has far-reaching implications for all of college sports \u2014 from the quaint, academically oriented Ivy League to the big-money football factories like Michigan and Alabama. But it\u2019s not time to cut down the nets just yet. (AP Photo\/Ben…<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"A
A Dartmouth Athletics banner hangs outside Alumni Gymnasium on the Dartmouth University campus in Hanover, N.H., Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Dartmouth basketball players vote Tuesday on whether to form a union. (AP Photo\/Jimmy Golen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Dartmouth
Dartmouth basketball players Cade Haskins, left, and Romeo Myrthil pose at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Dartmouth basketball players vote Tuesday on whether to form a union.(AP Photo\/Jimmy Golen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Dartmouth
Dartmouth basketball players Romeo Myrthil, left, and Cade Haskins talk after voting at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Dartmouth basketball players vote Tuesday on whether to form a union.(AP Photo\/Jimmy Golen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Dartmouth
Dartmouth basketball player Cade Haskins leaves after voting in Hanover, N.H., Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Dartmouth basketball players vote Tuesday on whether to form a union.(AP Photo\/Jimmy Golen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Dartmouth
Dartmouth basketball players Cade Haskins, left, and Romeo Myrthil are shown in Hanover, N.H., Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Dartmouth basketball players vote Tuesday on whether to form a union.(AP Photo\/Jimmy Golen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\"Dartmouth
Dartmouth basketball players, including Cade Haskins, left, and Romeo Myrthil leave after voting in Hanover, N.H., Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Dartmouth basketball players vote Tuesday on whether to form a union.(AP Photo\/Jimmy Golen)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>

HANOVER, N.H. \u2014 The Dartmouth men\u2019s basketball team voted to unionize Tuesday in an unprecedented step toward forming the first labor union for college athletes and another attack on the NCAA\u2019s deteriorating amateur business model.<\/p>\n

In an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board in the school\u2019s Human Resources offices, the players voted 13-2 to join Service Employees International Union Local 560, which already represents some Dartmouth workers. Every player on the roster participated.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday is a big day for our team,\u201d players Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil said in a statement. \u201cWe 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\u2019s time for the age of amateurism to end.\u201d<\/p>\n

The school has five business days to file an objection to the NLRB and could also take the matter to federal court. That could delay negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement until long after the current members of the basketball team have graduated.<\/p>\n

Dartmouth pushed back on the decision \u2014 again \u2014 in a statement, saying it was supportive of the five unions it negotiates with on campus, including SEIU Local 560.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this isolated circumstance, however, the students on the men\u2019s basketball team are not in any way employed by Dartmouth,\u201d the school said. \u201cFor Ivy League students who are varsity athletes, academics are of primary importance, and athletic pursuit is part of the educational experience. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the NCAA has long maintained that its players are \u201cstudent-athletes\u201d who were in school primarily to study, college sports has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry that richly rewards coaches and schools while the players remained unpaid amateurs.<\/p>\n

Recent court decisions have chipped away at that framework, with players now allowed to profit off their name, image and likeness and earn a still-limited stipend for living expenses beyond the cost of attendance. Last month\u2019s decision by an NLRB that the Big Green players are employees of the school, with the right to form a union, threatens to upend the amateur model.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will continue to talk to other athletes at Dartmouth and throughout the Ivy League about forming unions and working together to advocate for athletes\u2019 rights and well-being,\u201d Haskins and Myrthil said.<\/p>\n

A college athletes union would be unprecedented in American sports. A previous attempt to unionize the Northwestern football team failed because the teams Wildcats play in the Big Ten, which includes public schools that aren\u2019t under the jurisdiction of the NLRB.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why one of the NCAA\u2019s biggest threats isn\u2019t coming in one of the big-money football programs like Alabama or Michigan, which are largely indistinguishable from professional sports teams. Instead, it is the academically oriented Ivy League, where players don\u2019t receive athletic scholarships, teams play in sparsely filled gymnasiums and the games are streamed online instead of broadcast on network TV.<\/p>\n

Myrthil and Haskins have said they would like to form an Ivy League Players Association that would include athletes from other sports on campus and other schools in the conference. They said they understood that change could come too late to benefit them and their current teammates.<\/p>\n

The team includes four seniors, five juniors, three sophomores and three freshman.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have teammates here that we all love and support,\u201d Myrthil said after playing at Harvard last month in the Big Green\u2019s first game after the NLRB official\u2019s ruling. \u201cAnd whoever comes into the Dartmouth family is part of our family. So, we\u2019ll support them as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary Kay Henry, the international president of the SEIU, said the players \u201cwill go down as one of the greatest basketball teams in all of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ivy League is where the whole scandalous model of nearly free labor in college sports was born and that is where it is going to die,\u201d she said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HANOVER, N.H. \u2014 The Dartmouth men\u2019s basketball team voted to unionize Tuesday in an unprecedented step toward forming the first labor union for college athletes and another attack on the NCAA\u2019s deteriorating amateur business model.In an election…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":12043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","_newspack_byline_active":true,"_newspack_byline":"by [Author id=290]Jimmy Golen[\/Author] AP Sports Writer","newspack_content_restriction_is_exempt":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,508],"tags":[505],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[732],"class_list":["post-12042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-top-headlines-cm","tag-paywall","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/43077455-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12044,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12042\/revisions\/12044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12042"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fnewspack_spnsrs_tax&post=12042"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=12042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}