One step closer to student-athlete labor unions?
March Madness is a fitting time to focus on recent legal activity in the longstanding dispute over whether college athletes should be treated as employees. The latest development concerns the Dartmouth College men’s varsity basketball team’s right to unionize under the federal National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
Dartmouth’s players, like all Ivy League athletes, receive no athletic scholarships. The basketball program costs Dartmouth more to run than it generates in revenue.
Nonetheless, on Feb. 5, National Labor Relations Board Regional Director Laura Sacks issued an unprecedented decision that Dartmouth basketball players were employees under the NLRA. The squad voted 13-2 March 5 to form a union.
Click here to read the full article written by SCMV Shareholder Dan Eaton and published in The San Diego Union-Tribune.