On Tuesday, the union representing Dartmouth men’s basketball players announced it had withdrawn its formal petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board.
The decision comes just one month before President-Elect Donald Trump takes office and a red wave hits Congress, two factors that will bring anticipated shifts to the NLRB’s makeup.
While the overall athlete-employment movement isn’t dead yet, it did suffer a major blow.
The unionization petition was first filed in September of 2023 and approved this past winter. On a rainy day in March, players voted 13-2 in favor of becoming part of the Service Employees International Union Local 560 chapter, which also works with other campus groups.
Dartmouth’s university administrators immediately appealed the decision to the national board and refused to bargain with players in the meantime (a decision that caused the players to file a separate complaint with the NLRB). As of Tuesday, the national board had been considering whether or not to hear the appeal.
“By filing a request to withdraw our petition today, we seek to preserve the precedent set by this exceptional group of young people on the men’s varsity basketball team,” Local 560 president Chris Peck said in a statement. “They have pushed the conversation on 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 of college athletes in the country. We are extremely disappointed that Dartmouth chose not to respect the team’s decision and federal labor law by refusing to bargain, thus violating their own Code of Ethical Business Conduct.”
Front Office Sports reached out to a Dartmouth representative for comment.
While the NLRB was famously labor-friendly during the Biden administration, that will likely change after Inauguration Day.
Trump is expected to immediately fire NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has worked with athletes and their representatives over the past few years to secure athlete employment status. But his win didn’t mean that the NLRB’s five-member national board, which hears appeals of regional decisions, would have immediately flipped from pro-labor to pro-employer. The current makeup includes three Democrats, one Republican, and one vacancy—a split that was expected to continue, so long as the Senate re-confirmed current NLRB chair Lauren McFarren. But in a last-minute vote in December, the Senate voted against reconfirmation, with Sen. Joe Manchin (I., W.Va.) as the tie-breaking vote. So come 2025, Trump will have the opportunity to appoint a Republican in her place and give the chair position to a Republican—awarding conservatives, and likely pro-employer members, control of the NLRB.
If that happens, the NLRB national board could reverse the regional director’s decision that college athletes are employees and have the right to unionize. That decision would be near impossible for the players’ side to appeal in federal court for procedural reasons. It could also be used as a precedent to overturn other labor rulings in higher education beyond college sports, such as the decision that graduate student workers can unionize.
The fight to deem athletes employees isn’t over yet. The Johnson v. NCAA case over athlete employment status is still pending in the federal court system, and a growing chorus of coaches and players (including those involved in the House v. NCAA settlement) have begun to call for collective bargaining.
The NCAA and power conferences will continue their multimillion-dollar lobbying push in Congress to pass a law deeming athletes amateurs for good. Their chances of succeeding will be higher with a Republican majority in both houses and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) as head of the Senate Commerce Committee—though not guaranteed. Labor unions could also mount a lobbying push against the NCAA.
“While our strategy is shifting, we will continue to advocate for just compensation, adequate health coverage, and safe working conditions for varsity athletes at Dartmouth,” Peck said. “The NCAA and Dartmouth still face an uphill battle for a special antitrust exemption from Congress, leaving collective bargaining as the only viable pathway to address issues like the transfer portal, eligibility rules, and NIL payments.”
In the meantime, SEIU Local 560 says it continues to support an Ivy League Players Association, and will expand its Dartmouth group licensing program as well as continue to “seek legal and administrative avenues to preserve and expand the rights of college athletes.”
