By Arnie Alpert, Active with the Activists
HANOVER—The union representing Dartmouth College’s basketball team said Wednesday they have filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over the college’s refusal to negotiate.
Following a February 5 ruling by the NLRB’s Regional Director that they were employees as defined by federal law, members of the team, all undergrads, voted in March to unionize with representation from Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The college’s president, Sian Beilock, stated publicly that the college would refuse to bargain and force the union to take them to court. That process has now begun.
“We are filing an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) today on behalf of the men’s varsity basketball team because Dartmouth’s public refusal to bargain in good faith with a certified bargaining unit of SEIU Local 560 is in violation of both labor law and Dartmouth’s very own Code of Ethics,” said Chris Peck, the president of Local 560, which also represents non-academic employees of the Ivy League university.
“As is already evident on a campus with hundreds of undergraduate workers,” Peck said, “student employment is entirely compatible with Dartmouth’s educational mission. It is obvious to the entire Dartmouth community that varsity athletes are held to a different standard than other students as laid out in the ‘student athlete handbook,’ as well as Ivy League and NCAA rules. As the [NLRB] Regional Director found, the players provide a service of value under the control of the College in return for valuable consideration worth thousands of dollars in the form of a special admissions process, gear, tickets, meals, and cash per diem.”
In an opinion column published in the Wall Street Journal April 12, Beilock said, “We’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court if that’s what it takes” to block the players from negotiating a union contract.
Local 560 has recently reached tentative agreements with the college on its other contracts, covering hundreds of campus workers such as security personnel, custodians, groundskeepers, and cooks. The college’s graduate student workers, represented by the United Electrical Workers, settled their first contract with the college on June 29 after a two-month strike. Undergrads, represented by the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth, won a contract with substantial wage increases after a strike threat in 2023. The college’s librarians, part of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, are in the midst of negotiating a first contract. The college’s resident advisors, known as Undergraduate Assistants, have formed a union, too, and expect to begin bargaining the fall.
None of the negotiations have been easy, but it’s only with regard to the basketball players that the college has outright refused to bargain.
“In March, we appealed the regional director’s decision to the full NLRB and continue to await their review. In the meantime, we have declined to bargain with SEIU Local 560 on this matter,” according Jana Barnello, the college’s Director of Media Relations and Strategic Communications. “It is an unprecedented step in Dartmouth’s long history of labor negotiations, but it is the only lever we can engage to ensure this matter is reviewed by a federal court. We expected this action would result in their filing an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB, which they did and which we will also appeal.”
“For nearly 60 years, Dartmouth has followed a tradition of bargaining fair and equitable union contracts with our local,” Peck said. “It is past time for Dartmouth 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.”
The NLRB affirmed that they have received the unfair labor practice charge and that they will investigate the matter. They did not comment on when a ruling would be likely.
