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Dartmouth Basketball Players Look To Unionize. Are They Employees?

Plus: Has Cabrini Canceled Hoop Season?, Retention Problems In Work Force, What We're Watching This Weekend

Author

Steve Ulrich
September 15, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023 | written by STEVE ULRICH

430 schools, 42 conferences, 195,000 students participating in athletics. #whyD3
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TOP STORY
1. Dartmouth Basketball Players Look To Unionize. Are They Employees?

by Michael McCann and Daniel Libit, Sportico

“On Wednesday, the Service Employees International Union, Local 560 of Concord, N.H., filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board for the recognition of 15 men’s basketball players at Dartmouth College as a union.

The petition will take time to play out and is subject to litigation in federal courts, particularly since whether the basketball players are employees (a perquisite to forming a union) is itself subject to dispute. However, it reflects the latest step in a larger movement for Division I college athletes to become classified as employees of their colleges and possibly also their conferences and the NCAA.

It is the first NCAA petition the agency has received since NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo issued a memo in September of 2021, providing her opinion about the statutory protections of college athletes under the National Labor Relations Act, which the NLRB enforces.”

» What’s Next. “The Boston regional office will now review the petition, which will include a fact-finding investigation and a possible hearing. A decision by the regional office could be appealed to the NLRB’s national board and federal courts. From start to finish, the legal process could take several years. Nevertheless, it immediately adds another jolt to the compounding forces pushing for college athletes to be recognized as employees of the schools they compete for.”

» Be Smart. “The NLRB does not govern the relationship between public universities and their workers; that is a question of state labor law and state labor boards, which vary widely across the 50 states, with some “labor friendly” and others “management friendly.” In other words, the recognition of private college athletes as employees would not grant employee status to athletes at public colleges.”

» Worth Noting. “Dartmouth has an established tradition with student workers as union members. The Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth is a union for students who work in dining services. Dartmouth is a sensible place for a sports team to pursue unionization in the same vein as their classmates, and it’s not clear that the university - with its tradition of recognizing student labor and open-minded response to Wednesday’s filing - will necessarily push back to stop it.”

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BASKETBALL
2. Has Cabrini Canceled Basketball Season?

“Dave McHugh of D3Sports.com is reporting that Cabrini has canceled its 2023-24 women’s basketball season.

» Of Note. 2023-24 schedules for Gwynedd-Mercy, Immaculata and Neumann no longer list games with Cabrini on their women’s basketball schedules. Centenary still shows Cabrini on its schedule, while Marymount and Marywood have not posted schedules for the upcoming season.

NEWS
3. Higher Ed’s Work-Force-Retention Problems Aren’t Going Away

by Megan Zahneis, Chronicle of Higher Education

“The retention problems that have plagued higher ed for years show no sign of subsiding, according to new data from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. More than half of staff members who responded to CUPA-HR’s “Higher-Education Employee Retention Survey” this spring said they were at least somewhat likely to look for a new job in the coming year, a figure that remains unchanged from the group’s survey last year. A third of respondents said they were likely or very likely to do so.

A higher salary was the top reason staff members gave for considering jumping ship, followed by the desire for remote work, career advancement, and a more flexible schedule.”

» By The Numbers. “Employees in student affairs, enrollment management, academic affairs, and facilities management and operations — often high-turnover, burnout-prone areas — had the most tenuous ties to their work, with more than 35 percent of respondents in each of these fields saying they were likely or very likely to look for another job. Meanwhile, information-technology, human-resources and fiscal- and business-affairs staff members indicated greater job satisfaction. Employees under the age of 45, men, and people of color were the populations most likely to consider a new job.”

» Why It Matters. “While pay was the top cause of dissatisfaction reported by survey respondents, other, more nuanced forms of discontent also emerged. Nearly a quarter of employees said they didn’t feel they were recognized for their contributions, while about 40 percent didn’t feel they could bring up problems or tough issues at work, or that they belonged.”

» Quotable. ““The fact that higher-ed leadership continues to ignore this low-hanging fruit, I think, is the real story here. That from last year to this year, they really have not implemented what they need to in order to mitigate” the retention crisis,” Jacqueline Bichsel, CUPA-HR’s director of research and an author of the research brief detailing the survey’s results, added.

BANDS
4. Best Fight Song 2023

Have you submitted your school’s band and fight song for our 2023 contest? Entries close on Friday.

STREAMING
5. What We’re Watching Saturday

  • ⚽️ W: #6 Washington U. (3-0) vs. DePauw (4-0-1), 6p (Fri.) | Sidearm

  • ⚽️ W: #1 Messiah (4-1) vs. #5 William Smith (3-0-1), 11a | MACtv

  • 🏑 #6 Tufts (3-0) vs. #10 Amherst (2-1), 7p (Fri.) | Pack Network

  • 🏑 #5 Messiah (4-0) vs. #13 TCNJ (3-1), 4p | MACtv

  • ⚽️ M: #12 Tufts (2-0-1) vs. #24 Amherst (2-0-1), 2:30p | JumboCast

  • ⚽️ M: #11 Calvin (6-0) vs. Mount Union (5-0), 5p | BoxCast

  • 🏐 #3 UW-Oshkosh (10-0) vs. #6 Northwestern (4-1), 12p | WIAC Network

  •  🏐 #1 Juniata (5-0) vs. #4 Claremont-M-S (4-2), 10p | SCIAC Network

  • 🏈 #4 UW-Whitewater (2-0) vs. #19 Mary Hardin-Baylor (0-2), 1p | Stretch

  • 🏈 #10 Cortland (2-0) vs. #22 Susquehanna (2-0), 1p | Sidearm

NEWS
6. Lightning Round

🗞 News. St. Norbert professor Charley Jacobs has been named the Division III Faculty Athletics Representative of the Year by FARA.

🤽🏻‍♂️ Water Polo. Redlands sits atop the latest ACWPC poll, followed by Claremont-M-S and Pomona-Pitzer.

TRANSACTIONS
7. Comings and Goings

HIGHLIGHTS
8. #D3Plays

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