Could Unionizing End the Exploitation of College Athletes?
After winning the 2023 NCAA National Championship, University of Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh voiced his support for the idea that college athletes should have the right to unionize.[1] Unionizing among college athletes is not a new idea. After the 2021 Supreme Court ruling allowing athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL), unionizing seems like an inevitable result.[2]
To unionize, athletes would have to be categorized as employees of their universities. As employees, student-athletes would be able to unionize and collectively bargain with the school over compensation and working conditions including practice schedules, travel policies, and discipline policies from coaches.[3] They would also be able to negotiate to share in the revenue that they bring to their universities, a prospect that has been a driving force behind many unionization efforts.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that oversees collective bargaining rights for employees of private companies, is currently facing two key cases involving college athletes seeking to be considered employees. The first involved the Dartmouth men’s basketball team. The NLRB’s regional director in Boston released a statement that the Dartmouth basketball players were employees of their university under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) because Dartmouth had “the right to control the work” of the team and the team did that work “in exchange for compensation,” like equipment and game tickets.[3]
Despite this win and the Dartmouth basketball team successfully voting to unionize 13-2, the players still have a long way to go before they are recognized as university employees. As an Ivy League school, the Dartmouth players have unique hurdles. The university and NCAA plan to appeal, arguing that the players do not have the right to collectively bargain because they do not receive athletic scholarships as Ivy League athletes and the program loses money each year.
However, being part of an Ivy League institution does afford Dartmouth players advantages. Namely, they are within the purview of the NLRA which only applies to private institutions. This is unlike the Northwestern football team, which launched a similar effort to unionize in 2014. That year, a regional NLRB director ruled that Northwestern players were employees, but their efforts ultimately failed when the Board declined to exercise jurisdiction over the athletes. Although Northwestern is a private institution, its conference peers in the Big Ten were public institutions, which are not covered by the NLRA and thus have different laws for collective bargaining. The NLRB did not want to create an unfair or unbalanced conference in which athletes at only one school had the ability to bargain.[4]
Another factor working in the Dartmouth players’ favor is that the labor landscape has changed significantly since 2014. Public support for both college athletes and labor rights has seen a substantial increase. The NLRB under the Biden administration has also been more supportive of unionizing efforts than it was under Obama in 2014.[5]
Football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball players from the University of Southern California (USC) are trying a slightly different strategy in their case currently before the NLRB. They are using a joint-employer theory by arguing that athletes are not only employees of their school, but also employees of their conference and the NCAA, which are both private institutions and thus within the NLRB’s jurisdiction.[6] This could have implications for all college athletes, regardless of whether they attend public or private universities. The USC athletes’ case is even stronger than the Dartmouth case because, unlike the Dartmouth players, USC athletes actually receive scholarships which could be considered compensation for their services.[7]
There are concerns that classifying athletes as employees could have adverse effects, particularly for a majority of athletes who are not participating in big-revenue sports. Some schools fear they may end up getting rid of some of their non-revenue generating sports, so they have enough funds to compensate the remaining athletes. Additionally, the impact of Title IX on the employment model for student-athletes remains unclear.[8]
However, these arguments against classifying athletes as employees were the same worries against allowing NIL deals. That once boosters start paying college athletes there would not be enough money for other less lucrative sports. But as of yet, two years after NIL, schools have not cut any sports due to the diversion of NIL funds.[9]
One thing is definite: something needs to change. There are countless stories of athletes bringing in millions of dollars to their institutions, yet the athletes receive nothing and often struggle to even buy food for themselves.[10] Unionization would give athletes a voice in how they are treated and potentially put an end to this economic exploitation. As Jim Harbaugh put it: we need to “let the talent share in the ever-increasing revenues…. We’re all robbing the same train, and the ones that are in the position to do the heavy lifting, the ones that risk life and limb out there on a football field are the players and not just, not just football players, student-athletes.” [11]
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/michigan-jim-harbaugh-says-college-110000872.html
[4] https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/39485414/nlrb-lawsuits-mounting-legal-challenges
[7] https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/39485414/nlrb-lawsuits-mounting-legal-challenges
[8] https://theathletic.com/5313992/2024/03/04/college-athletes-employees-dartmouth/
[9] https://www.latimes.com/sports/usc/story/2023-11-06/usc-athletes-hearing-nlrb-impact-college-sports
[10] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/may/27/college-sports-union-right-to-organize-act
[11] https://news.yahoo.com/michigan-jim-harbaugh-says-college-110000872.html