Dartmouth hoopsters try to score with unfair labor charge against college

Dartmouth’s men’s basketball team filed an unfair labor practice charge against the college this week over its refusal to collectively bargain.

The union representing the team, Service Employees International Union Local 560, filed the charge with the National Labor Relations Board Wednesday, saying the school is violating federal labor laws and failing its students.

“It is past time for Dartmouth’s administration to avoid the looming financial and legal liabilities by grasping this opportunity to show leadership, as the players have, and live up to its own rhetoric regarding the importance of both community and dialogue,” SEIU 560 President Chris Peck said in a statement. 

NLRB Regional Director Laura Sacks ruled in March that Dartmouth maintained sufficient control over the basketball players to consider them employees of the college and not students. The NLRB’s ruling let the team vote on unionization, which it did, voting 13-2 to join SEIU 560. 

Dartmouth rejected the NLRB’s decision at the time and reaffirmed its intention to challenge the decision this week in the wake of SEIU’s filing. 

“Dartmouth’s decades-long commitment to athletics is an extension of our academic mission,” Dartmouth said in a statement Wednesday. “And we maintain that the regional director made an extraordinary mistake in finding that these students are employees.”

The Hanover, New Hampshire, college went on to say it plans to challenge the ruling in federal court. 

The NLRB’s ruling in March classified only the Dartmouth men’s basketball team as employees, but the precedent set by Ms. Sacks could significantly change the structure of college athletics if it’s held up in federal court.