Dartmouth College Basketball Players Halt Effort to Unionize

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.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 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.

Already a subscriber? Log in.The decision to withdraw the petition appeared to be an effort to preserve a favorable federal ruling that could have been in jeopardy under President-elect Donald J. Trump.