Union leader: Multibillion-dollar NCAA antitrust settlement won't slow efforts to unionize players
Advocates say they won't slow their efforts to unionize college athletes even with the NCAA’s agreement this week to allow players to be paid from a limited revenue-sharing pool
BOSTON (AP) — Efforts to unionize college athletes will continue, advocates said Friday, even with the NCAA’s landmark agreement to allow players to be paid from a limited revenue-sharing pool.
“With this settlement, the NCAA continues to do everything it can to avoid free market competition, which is most appropriate in this case,” said Chris Peck, the president of the local that won the right to represent Dartmouth men’s basketball players – a first for a college sports team. “The attempt at a revenue sharing workaround only supports our case that the NCAA and Dartmouth continue to perpetrate a form of disguised employment.”
The NCAA and the Power Five conferences agreed this week to an antitrust settlement that will pay $2.77 billion to a class of current and former players who were unable to profit from their skills because of longstanding amateurism rules in college sports. The settlement also permits – but does not require – schools to set aside about $21 million per year to share with players.
What the agreement didn’t do was address whether players are employees — and thus entitled to bargain over their working conditions — or “student-athletes” participating in extracurricular activities just like members of the glee club or Model United Nations. In the Dartmouth case, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that schools exerted so much control over the men's basketball players that they met the legal definition of employees.
