The Dartmouth College basketball players who voted in March to unionize withdrew their petition on Tuesday, a move largely intended to preserve the favorable federal judgment that they had secured and that could have been in jeopardy once President-elect Donald J. Trump took office.
The players were the first college athletes granted the right to unionize by a federal labor official and the ensuing 13-to-2 vote by the men’s team in favor of forming a union seemed like a pivotal moment in the mounting legal challenges to the college sports model. But Dartmouth refused to negotiate with the players and appealed the ruling by the National Labor Relations Board regional director.
Now with Mr. Trump, a Republican, set to return to the White House in less than three weeks, the Service Employees International Union Local 560, which represents the Dartmouth players, recognized that a Republican-leaning N.L.R.B. might not be as friendly to their argument that the athletes should be classified as hourly workers just like other students who have jobs on campus.
“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,” Chris Peck, president of the S.E.I.U. Local 560, said in a statement.
Instead, Mr. Peck said, his union will support Ivy League athletes more broadly by fighting the N.C.A.A.’s pursuit of an antitrust exemption in Congress, supporting an Ivy League players association and taking legal and administrative steps to buttress college athletes’ rights.
Dartmouth said in a statement that it supported the players’ decision to withdraw their petition, reiterating the school’s stance that classifying them as employees lacked legal precedent. Dartmouth “has deep respect for our 1,500 union colleagues,” the statement added. “In this isolated instance, however, we did not believe unionization was appropriate.”
The union’s decision underscores the idiosyncrasies of the N.L.R.B., a political body whose existence has been challenged recently by companies like SpaceX, Amazon and Trader Joe’s.
The law firm representing those companies also represents Dartmouth. And the firm is representing the University of Southern California., the Pac-12 Conference and the N.C.A.A. in a case asserting that U.S.C. football and men’s and women’s basketball players should be classified as employees.
An administrative law judge has not yet issued a ruling in that case. Ramogi Huma, the director of the National College Players Association, which brought the case for U.S.C. athletes, declined to comment.
The Dartmouth case has parallels to one a decade ago, when a regional N.L.R.B. director concluded that Northwestern University football players were university employees. But the board declined in 2015 to assert jurisdiction in the case.
Though the Northwestern players’ bid to unionize died with that board decision, athlete activists were encouraged that the board had allowed the regional director’s ruling to stand. When Mr. Trump won the presidency for the first time in 2016, the activists decided to put off further efforts, fearing they might endanger the favorable ruling.
But in 2021, months after Jennifer Abruzzo was appointed as N.L.R.B. general counsel, she issued a memo saying that certain college athletes should be considered employees under the National Labor Relations Act. That memo served as an invitation to Dartmouth players, even as they seemed unlikely leaders of a movement.
At a time when restrictions have been lifted on athletes ability to profit from their name, image and likeness — and as a handful of them make millions of dollars — about half the Dartmouth basketball players last year had jobs that helped pay their tuition.
The college drew a distinction between its athletes and those at big-time sports schools who regularly perform on national TV and are supported with booster-fueled funds that are frowned upon at Ivy League schools. (The schools do not award athletic scholarships.)
The Dartmouth players’ objective was to be paid just the campus minimum wage, $16.25 an hour, for the 20 hours a week they are allowed by N.C.A.A. to spend during the season on basketball activities. While it might not be life-changing money, they said, it would be enough that they would not need to have another job.
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