Why some college athletes want to unionize
Players on the Dartmouth men’s basketball team are college employees who are eligible to unionize — at least that’s what the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Boston said this week.
The players filed a petition to unionize back in the fall. The college argued they couldn’t because they aren’t employees; the college and the NCAA are likely to appeal and eventually the full NLRB will weigh in.
This isn’t the first time college athletes have tried to unionize: Northwestern’s football team tried about 10 years ago but ultimately failed.
NCAA Division I athletes can spend 20, 40, up to 60 hours a week practicing, training and traveling for games.
Plus, “they are limited sometimes by their coaches in what courses they can take, what major they can choose,” said Gabe Feldman at Tulane Law School. “They are sometimes asked to miss class.”
Aside from scholarships (which Dartmouth and other Ivy League schools don’t even give out), these student athletes are not paid.
That’s one thing athletes might try to get out of unionizing, according to Alicia Jessop at Pepperdine University: “The right to collectively bargain a wage above and beyond a scholarship. However, there’s other benefits beyond that — namely, the ability to collectively bargain hours.”
There may be the chance to negotiate employment conditions, too. “In the world of sports, this is things like drug testing, whether biometric data can be collected from you,” Jessop said.
At top schools where broadcasting deals bring in millions of dollars, she added that an athletes union might try to bargain for revenue sharing.
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