When Student Basketball Teams Unionize
What’s the latest in labor union news? The Dartmouth basketball team has formed a labor union.
Say what? Aren’t these labor organizations only for employees? Isn’t it true that the Dartmouth basketball team members are students, not workers? Yes, and yes, but in making these points, we reckon, is the absence of the fact that Dartmouth College is a member of the Ivy League, and they do things differently than ordinary mortals. Perhaps someone should check on whether the professors there, who led these student-athletes down this particular garden path, have been engaged in a bit of plagiarism, instead of rational teaching of their classes. Maybe there’s something wrong with the water supply, if that is what they are drinking, in New England.
One way to look at this new initiative is that it is stakeholder theory gone berserk. Stakeholder theory is the view that yes, the corporation should offer a fair return to the owners, the stockholders, but should also do so for complete strangers, and people who have no ownership rights in the company at all. For example, workers, suppliers, customers, neighbors, the man in the street (not to say the man in the moon), and people halfway around the globe, to boot, for all we know.
The point is, if (Dartmouth) students can become employees, without working for an empl
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