Dive Brief:

• Members of the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team on Dec. 31 withdrew their petition to form what would have been the first-ever collegiate athlete labor union in the U.S., the Service Employees International Union Local 560 confirmed to HR Dive in an email.
• The university’s board of trustees also confirmed the move in a motion filed with NLRB Thursday to dismiss the underlying union representation preceding as well as a related unfair labor practice charge.
• Members of the basketball team voted 13-2 to form a union in March 2024 weeks after a NLRB regional director held that the players were employees of Dartmouth and could hold the election. The university appealed the regional director’s decision to NLRB, but the board had not issued its own decision prior to the petitioners’ withdrawal.

Dive Insight:

In a Dec. 31 statement emailed to HR Dive, Chris Peck, president of SEIU Local 560, which sought to represent the players, said that the withdrawal of its petition represented a strategic shift and that SEIU sought to “preserve the precedent” set by the team’s vote.

“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 union’s decision may be connected to anticipated leadership changes at NLRB following the election of President-elect Donald Trump. The Senate rejected the renomination of the former NLRB Chairman Lauren McFerran last month, teeing up a likely Republican majority within the year.

Mark Spring, partner at Carothers, DiSante & Freudenberger, said in a Jan. 2 blog for the firm that Trump is also likely to appoint a new general counsel for NLRB, adding that “it was highly unlikely that the full Trump NLRB would find that the Dartmouth student-athletes were employees and very likely that the petition would have been thrown out by the new Board.”

Despite the Dartmouth news, the status of college athletes remains a hot-button legal topic. Last year also saw the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hold that athletes may be considered employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, provided their relationship to a school or the NCAA reflects an “economic reality” in which their play “crosses the legal line into work protected by the FLSA.”

Both the 3rd Circuit’s decision and the Dartmouth unionization effort raise several wage-and-hour questions for the athletes and institutions involved. Peck said that SEIU would support the development of a players’ association for athletes who participate in the Ivy League, the athletic conference in which Dartmouth competes, among other efforts.