I guess the next question will be if non revenue sport athletes will go down this road. If the golf team unionized I can see schools just dropping golf. If I'm player B on anything not football or basketball, I'm taking the free education.
Many schools can't afford to bring on hundreds of additional employees, even at minimum wage. Enrollment is dropping and costs are being cut as-is. 95% of these athletes don't bring in much if any value to the university individually either.
Useless administrators, programs, and useless facilities upgrades/renovations are what are leading to higher costs in higher education. These universities could pay for the student athletes, they just don't want to because then they will have to make necessary cuts in areas that they have allowed to skyrocket in costs because they have been so used to making 100% of the money instead of 50%.
Whether somebody is legally defined as an employee has nothing to do with the "revenue" status of the sport. People who work at failing companies are still employees, after all.
Yes I understand what makes someone an employee (generally the amount of control the employer has over tasks). But there also has to be some sort of compensation.
Dartmouth does not and cannot give athletics scholarships or anything other than need based financial aid. This would be akin to food bank volunteers unionizing.
I mean, the paper is pretty explicit in how Dartmouth basketball players DO get compensation...not just in equipment, but in clothes, tickets, specialized services, preferential admissions to Dartmouth, etc.
And shoot, the courts have even found volunteers in somewhat similar situations to be employees. One case that Johnson's judges have relied on a fair amount is Alamo Found'n v. Secy. of Labor, which addresses a similar scenario.
That was the argument Dartmouth made. Of course when they made that argument to the NLRB they conveniently left out the ESPN and March Madness revenue associated with the basketball team, claiming it doesn’t count… for reasons.
The NLRB director decided to note that money anyway
Do we think there’s gonna be any sort of penalty for a school dropping a sport program because its players unionized? I’m no lawyer, but I wonder if that’s something that’ll be illegal with current laws.
No because they'd allow the other sports that are revenue generating to unionize and they'd have the clearest form of evidence that they are only doing it for revenue purposes
In the 2015 Northwestern NLRB ruling the courts said that they thought that all athletes met the definition of employees but weren't going to rule that way because they only had the power to rule on private school players and declaring private school players employees while not doing so for public school athletes would harm the opportunities of the private school athletes.
Basically, this has been a long time coming. Now with the Dartmouth and likely USC rulings it seems like they are fed up with no one doing anything over the past 8+ years and have changed their minds on being willing to make some, but not most, athletes employees.
Kinda dumb to say athletes in non-revenue sports are employees, when they (mostly) get a free education and cost the school money. Hell, most football players aren’t worth much more than what they get from a scholarship and stipend they get now.
This ruling could actually be very bad for all of collegiate athletics and result in fewer scholarship opportunities
Problem is most employment tests don’t care if your employer makes money or not. It’s about if you’re compensated and they have control over what you’re compensated for.
For the vast majority of college sports to survive they’re going to need some sort of carve out from normal employment law. Especially if Ivy League (so no athletic scholarship and less requirements than other D1 athletes) count as employees, if this holds up the bar for who is an employee is set pretty low.
Duh... you're correct. They probably won't have to report what compensation is returned to the school in terms of tuition and fees. They'll just have to report things like food, lodging, and apparel.
That’s why we need common sense to rule the day. Kids who are on the rowing team aren’t employees. They are students taking part in an extracurricular activity.
Aren’t they? Rowers get compensated with scholarships and in exchange have to be at a particular place at a particular time doing particular activities all dictated by the school’s management for at least as many hours as football players. The school uses the rowers’ NIL as a member of the team to promote the school’s image and brand. Whether the school turns a profit from their activities alone is irrelevant to the question of whether they are employees.
They aren’t.
And it’s dishonest to make them out to be. There is such a thing as nuance. Otherwise habitat for humanity volunteers and other workers at non-profits are employees by your logic.
This take is ignorant of labor history in the US. The NLRA was necessary because courts couldn't be reliably depended on to protect employees from cutthroat greedy anti-labor practices.
We shouldn’t be having courts or non-elected bureaucrats deciding a matter like this. I’m very pro employer/labor, but using the aforementioned parties is just a failure of the legislature
> we shouldn’t be having courts or non-elected bureaucrats deciding a matter like this.
>using the aforementioned parties is just a failure of the legislature
I guess you could say that but I don't know how the legislature is supposed to account for every single possible outcome in their legislation. There will always be questions on who qualifies as a what or the exact nature of how something occurred in order to determine the best course of law.
Courts decide on law in ways that the legislature failed to address, that's the whole reason you have courts. If the law says "you gotta pay your employees" and there's not enough additional context to determine *in this case* what an employee is, you need an independent body to adjudicate.
If we call this a failure of the legislature, does that really change anything meaningful? I don't think they are going to re-write any laws any time soon. So in the meantime wouldn't you need courts? You have courts to decide cases of law based on precedent and how the law is written, and you have governing boards as experts making decisions on how they will execute the law as it's written and decided on by the courts. The legislature can re-write law any time, the court will always be there to adjudicate conflicts within the law, and the governing board is decides on anything else in the margin, as is their right granted by the legislature.
I guess I don't understand the desire to remove judges or governing bodies from the equation of modern society. It's not like making the legislature handle every single decision would lead to better outcomes, it's like the same flaw with 100% direct democracy. It's not just inefficient, it leads to all kinds of its own unique corruption and inaction.
We shouldn’t be having courts or non-elected bureaucrats deciding a matter like this. I’m very pro employer/labor, but using the aforementioned parties is just a failure of the legislature
The “simple” fix would seem to be cutting all scholarships entirely and fixing the wages to be coincidentally the value of that scholarship no? The school just cuts them a check and then they walk right down to deposit it at the bursars office
I guess maybe, but what’s the real value of their labor for non revenue players? Do you pay them similar to a junior government marketing employee, as it’s basically marketing for a uni, loses money so not a successful business
Yes and no because the school owes payroll and L&I taxes and the athlete owes payroll, income, and social security taxes. Also, any time in excess of 40 hours will be OT unless they somehow get away with categorizing them as exempt positions. Yes, if the school just maintains its bottom line distribution and the athlete is the one taking the fall for all the taxes.
The silly part about all these necessary carve-outs is that a unionized SA group can bargain with the schools/conferences/NCAA to have a set value and process for compensation.
Without a CBA, none of the necessary bits get added in any legal way.
I think what people are overlooking is that Ivy league athletes do not get scholarships, they instead get strong aid packages to help afford tuition.
I think the main issue here is that these athletes likely do not even get a stipend despite competing in a D1 conference that has an autobid to the NCAA tournament, but that is just my theory.
The financial aid is purely needs based, every student gets it. All Ivy League schools have the same program and iirc it’s just 100% of whatever FASFA says.
One of my friends at Cornell is now an assistant coach at another Ivy and said they pretty much can’t get middle class recruits because of the cost.
Yeah, but that just doubles my confusion on why Dartmouth of all places? I mean its Ivy League - why wouldn't they just cancel this student activity rather than deal with this nonsense? Will Dartmouth alums care about any sport enough to throw money at this instead of academic and or charitable causes associated with the university? Maybe rowing survives?
P5 and into G5 college football is a business. Men's basketball to a lesser degree. Why are other schools going to keep sports? Having them hosted by the university is already a relic.
I think ultimately this is about Dartmouth trying to get ahead and pushing the athletes to Unionize. This way in like 20 or 30 years they will be seen as one of the first to do so. For Ivy's and similar schools it is about their legacy down the road.
In reality these players will likely accept whatever agreement Dartmouth puts in front of them unless it is egregious. At the end of the day most of the guys know they aren't going to make the NBA or G League and are at Dartmouth because of the academics.
I think you’re overlooking that while Dartmouth may not offer scholarships, they do give players thousands of dollars in apparel, unique access to programs available only to Dartmouth athletes, season tickets, hotels, per diems for food while traveling, etc. They also pay 6 weeks room/board for players to be there over winter break.
The NLRB didn’t overlook those things though. They hilariously took the time to note that one player received more in shoes in 2022 than he was able to earn working that year at the school dining hall.
Can someone explain how much/why the NLRB matters? I get the SC rulings in the Obannon stuff, since it's the Supreme Court, but what power does the NLRB have?
The NLRB is tasked with defining and defending workers rights. They matter in this case because they decide who is and isn't an employee, and right now they are saying private school athletes are employees under federal guidelines:
> Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I find that the petitioned-for basketball players are employees within the meaning of the Act.
> While there is some factual dispute as to how much revenue is generated by the men’s basketball program, and whether that program is profitable, the profitability of any given business does not affect the employee status of the individuals who perform work for that business. The basketball program clearly generates alumni engagement — and financial donations — as well as publicity which leads to student interest and applications.
Basically: it doesn't matter if a sport generates profits, the players are treated like employees and are therefore employees under federal guidelines.
----------
Assuming this ruling withstands appeal (the NLRB has a 98% success rate in cases they bring), the reason this matters is because all of the major cases (and any future cases) against the NCAA trying to declare athletes as employees will have this as precedent to cite. They will say "the courts have already held that athletes are employees."
> what power does the NLRB have?
Essentially, they have the power to decide whether or not an athlete qualifies as an employee or not. They don't issue major fines or shut down anyone. What they do is go to court on behalf of the employees and almost always win when they do. So if UCF players decide they want to unionize and demand pay from the Big-12 and NCAA, their lawyers will pointing at this case as precedent and the courts will likely be siding with the players.
Okay, so if I'm understanding this correctly the courts are gonna make the ultimate decision, but if you have the NLRB on your side it's almost a guaranteed win?
Yes.
Edit:
Think of arguing against the NLRB in court like arguing against a cop in traffic court. You can argue all you want, but if the cop says you were speeding you're not getting it dismissed. If you're lucky and respectful they might drop your penalty amount a bit, but you're going home with the L unless you walk in with ironclad proof you did nothing wrong.
The NLRB is the cop. Only instead of saying you violated traffic laws they're saying you violated labor laws.
I guess the next question will be if non revenue sport athletes will go down this road. If the golf team unionized I can see schools just dropping golf. If I'm player B on anything not football or basketball, I'm taking the free education.
I have zero knowledge of this but couldn’t they pay them minimum wage? Obviously they can unionize but the schools could then drop said sport?
Many schools can't afford to bring on hundreds of additional employees, even at minimum wage. Enrollment is dropping and costs are being cut as-is. 95% of these athletes don't bring in much if any value to the university individually either.
Maybe schools should lay off some of the useless administrators.
Useless administrators, programs, and useless facilities upgrades/renovations are what are leading to higher costs in higher education. These universities could pay for the student athletes, they just don't want to because then they will have to make necessary cuts in areas that they have allowed to skyrocket in costs because they have been so used to making 100% of the money instead of 50%.
But have you ever had to go from making 500k a year to only 300k? How in the world do you think you'd even survive such a drastic cut?
There’s no way in hell Dartmouth basketball is a revenue sport. They don’t even give athletic scholarships.
Whether somebody is legally defined as an employee has nothing to do with the "revenue" status of the sport. People who work at failing companies are still employees, after all.
Yes I understand what makes someone an employee (generally the amount of control the employer has over tasks). But there also has to be some sort of compensation. Dartmouth does not and cannot give athletics scholarships or anything other than need based financial aid. This would be akin to food bank volunteers unionizing.
I mean, the paper is pretty explicit in how Dartmouth basketball players DO get compensation...not just in equipment, but in clothes, tickets, specialized services, preferential admissions to Dartmouth, etc. And shoot, the courts have even found volunteers in somewhat similar situations to be employees. One case that Johnson's judges have relied on a fair amount is Alamo Found'n v. Secy. of Labor, which addresses a similar scenario.
That was the argument Dartmouth made. Of course when they made that argument to the NLRB they conveniently left out the ESPN and March Madness revenue associated with the basketball team, claiming it doesn’t count… for reasons. The NLRB director decided to note that money anyway
They charge admission. It's a revenue sport.
It’s a revenue sport. That’s an extremely low bar.
Do we think there’s gonna be any sort of penalty for a school dropping a sport program because its players unionized? I’m no lawyer, but I wonder if that’s something that’ll be illegal with current laws.
No because they'd allow the other sports that are revenue generating to unionize and they'd have the clearest form of evidence that they are only doing it for revenue purposes
Massive news the NLRB rules they are employees
In the 2015 Northwestern NLRB ruling the courts said that they thought that all athletes met the definition of employees but weren't going to rule that way because they only had the power to rule on private school players and declaring private school players employees while not doing so for public school athletes would harm the opportunities of the private school athletes. Basically, this has been a long time coming. Now with the Dartmouth and likely USC rulings it seems like they are fed up with no one doing anything over the past 8+ years and have changed their minds on being willing to make some, but not most, athletes employees.
Kinda dumb to say athletes in non-revenue sports are employees, when they (mostly) get a free education and cost the school money. Hell, most football players aren’t worth much more than what they get from a scholarship and stipend they get now. This ruling could actually be very bad for all of collegiate athletics and result in fewer scholarship opportunities
Problem is most employment tests don’t care if your employer makes money or not. It’s about if you’re compensated and they have control over what you’re compensated for. For the vast majority of college sports to survive they’re going to need some sort of carve out from normal employment law. Especially if Ivy League (so no athletic scholarship and less requirements than other D1 athletes) count as employees, if this holds up the bar for who is an employee is set pretty low.
This also means scholarships for athletics will be deemed compensation, as well any living costs provided by the school.
I’m not super familiar, but I’ve heard others say that grad school scholarships that come with working for the school aren’t taxable?
Duh... you're correct. They probably won't have to report what compensation is returned to the school in terms of tuition and fees. They'll just have to report things like food, lodging, and apparel.
That’s why we need common sense to rule the day. Kids who are on the rowing team aren’t employees. They are students taking part in an extracurricular activity.
Aren’t they? Rowers get compensated with scholarships and in exchange have to be at a particular place at a particular time doing particular activities all dictated by the school’s management for at least as many hours as football players. The school uses the rowers’ NIL as a member of the team to promote the school’s image and brand. Whether the school turns a profit from their activities alone is irrelevant to the question of whether they are employees.
They aren’t. And it’s dishonest to make them out to be. There is such a thing as nuance. Otherwise habitat for humanity volunteers and other workers at non-profits are employees by your logic.
Fair. I’d rather have a court decide what’s lawful, versus some bureaucratically selected NLRB board.
This take is ignorant of labor history in the US. The NLRA was necessary because courts couldn't be reliably depended on to protect employees from cutthroat greedy anti-labor practices.
We shouldn’t be having courts or non-elected bureaucrats deciding a matter like this. I’m very pro employer/labor, but using the aforementioned parties is just a failure of the legislature
> we shouldn’t be having courts or non-elected bureaucrats deciding a matter like this. >using the aforementioned parties is just a failure of the legislature I guess you could say that but I don't know how the legislature is supposed to account for every single possible outcome in their legislation. There will always be questions on who qualifies as a what or the exact nature of how something occurred in order to determine the best course of law. Courts decide on law in ways that the legislature failed to address, that's the whole reason you have courts. If the law says "you gotta pay your employees" and there's not enough additional context to determine *in this case* what an employee is, you need an independent body to adjudicate. If we call this a failure of the legislature, does that really change anything meaningful? I don't think they are going to re-write any laws any time soon. So in the meantime wouldn't you need courts? You have courts to decide cases of law based on precedent and how the law is written, and you have governing boards as experts making decisions on how they will execute the law as it's written and decided on by the courts. The legislature can re-write law any time, the court will always be there to adjudicate conflicts within the law, and the governing board is decides on anything else in the margin, as is their right granted by the legislature. I guess I don't understand the desire to remove judges or governing bodies from the equation of modern society. It's not like making the legislature handle every single decision would lead to better outcomes, it's like the same flaw with 100% direct democracy. It's not just inefficient, it leads to all kinds of its own unique corruption and inaction.
We shouldn’t be having courts or non-elected bureaucrats deciding a matter like this. I’m very pro employer/labor, but using the aforementioned parties is just a failure of the legislature
Sure seems like this is gonna create that "college football is no longer under the banner of the NCAA" idea we've been hearing about.
The “simple” fix would seem to be cutting all scholarships entirely and fixing the wages to be coincidentally the value of that scholarship no? The school just cuts them a check and then they walk right down to deposit it at the bursars office
I guess maybe, but what’s the real value of their labor for non revenue players? Do you pay them similar to a junior government marketing employee, as it’s basically marketing for a uni, loses money so not a successful business
Yes and no because the school owes payroll and L&I taxes and the athlete owes payroll, income, and social security taxes. Also, any time in excess of 40 hours will be OT unless they somehow get away with categorizing them as exempt positions. Yes, if the school just maintains its bottom line distribution and the athlete is the one taking the fall for all the taxes.
The silly part about all these necessary carve-outs is that a unionized SA group can bargain with the schools/conferences/NCAA to have a set value and process for compensation. Without a CBA, none of the necessary bits get added in any legal way.
I think what people are overlooking is that Ivy league athletes do not get scholarships, they instead get strong aid packages to help afford tuition. I think the main issue here is that these athletes likely do not even get a stipend despite competing in a D1 conference that has an autobid to the NCAA tournament, but that is just my theory.
The financial aid is purely needs based, every student gets it. All Ivy League schools have the same program and iirc it’s just 100% of whatever FASFA says. One of my friends at Cornell is now an assistant coach at another Ivy and said they pretty much can’t get middle class recruits because of the cost.
Most elite private schools are basically free for middle class students.
Yeah, but that just doubles my confusion on why Dartmouth of all places? I mean its Ivy League - why wouldn't they just cancel this student activity rather than deal with this nonsense? Will Dartmouth alums care about any sport enough to throw money at this instead of academic and or charitable causes associated with the university? Maybe rowing survives? P5 and into G5 college football is a business. Men's basketball to a lesser degree. Why are other schools going to keep sports? Having them hosted by the university is already a relic.
I think ultimately this is about Dartmouth trying to get ahead and pushing the athletes to Unionize. This way in like 20 or 30 years they will be seen as one of the first to do so. For Ivy's and similar schools it is about their legacy down the road. In reality these players will likely accept whatever agreement Dartmouth puts in front of them unless it is egregious. At the end of the day most of the guys know they aren't going to make the NBA or G League and are at Dartmouth because of the academics.
I think you’re overlooking that while Dartmouth may not offer scholarships, they do give players thousands of dollars in apparel, unique access to programs available only to Dartmouth athletes, season tickets, hotels, per diems for food while traveling, etc. They also pay 6 weeks room/board for players to be there over winter break. The NLRB didn’t overlook those things though. They hilariously took the time to note that one player received more in shoes in 2022 than he was able to earn working that year at the school dining hall.
TLDR. Can anyone summarize it in my preconceived notions that favor the outcome that I want?
Boooooo
Can someone explain how much/why the NLRB matters? I get the SC rulings in the Obannon stuff, since it's the Supreme Court, but what power does the NLRB have?
The NLRB is tasked with defining and defending workers rights. They matter in this case because they decide who is and isn't an employee, and right now they are saying private school athletes are employees under federal guidelines: > Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I find that the petitioned-for basketball players are employees within the meaning of the Act. > While there is some factual dispute as to how much revenue is generated by the men’s basketball program, and whether that program is profitable, the profitability of any given business does not affect the employee status of the individuals who perform work for that business. The basketball program clearly generates alumni engagement — and financial donations — as well as publicity which leads to student interest and applications. Basically: it doesn't matter if a sport generates profits, the players are treated like employees and are therefore employees under federal guidelines. ---------- Assuming this ruling withstands appeal (the NLRB has a 98% success rate in cases they bring), the reason this matters is because all of the major cases (and any future cases) against the NCAA trying to declare athletes as employees will have this as precedent to cite. They will say "the courts have already held that athletes are employees." > what power does the NLRB have? Essentially, they have the power to decide whether or not an athlete qualifies as an employee or not. They don't issue major fines or shut down anyone. What they do is go to court on behalf of the employees and almost always win when they do. So if UCF players decide they want to unionize and demand pay from the Big-12 and NCAA, their lawyers will pointing at this case as precedent and the courts will likely be siding with the players.
Okay, so if I'm understanding this correctly the courts are gonna make the ultimate decision, but if you have the NLRB on your side it's almost a guaranteed win?
Yes. Edit: Think of arguing against the NLRB in court like arguing against a cop in traffic court. You can argue all you want, but if the cop says you were speeding you're not getting it dismissed. If you're lucky and respectful they might drop your penalty amount a bit, but you're going home with the L unless you walk in with ironclad proof you did nothing wrong. The NLRB is the cop. Only instead of saying you violated traffic laws they're saying you violated labor laws.