The state’s Employment Relations Board is considering whether members of Oregon State University’s women’s basketball team are school employees with the power to unionize.

The board’s eventual decision — which could take months and is likely to be challenged — could have significant effects beyond Corvallis. It’s the latest chapter in an ongoing and complex debate, five years after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed college athletes to receive compensation beyond scholarships.

During the first of two sets of hearings earlier this month in Corvallis, Oregon State players told an administrative law judge about the discrepancy in compensation for some college athletes. They described the demands of college athletic participation as the same as paid employment. In contrast, representatives for OSU administration asserted that the players are students who play basketball as part of their college experience, not for wages.

“Athletes — or students, period — performing physically to the peak of their possibilities,” is why OSU sponsors women’s basketball, the school’s provost and executive vice president Roy Haggerty said during the September hearing. “So women’s basketball and other intercollegiate sports allows athletes in those sports to perform to the maximum level of their abilities.”

Haggerty and other OSU officials argued that basketball is an enhancement of the college experience, but academics is the primary purpose.

The players described an atmosphere where they are already receiving compensation in the form of scholarships, stipends, and most recently revenue-sharing for use of their name, image and likeness.

“I hope that if we get seen as employees that people on my team will get paid fairly,” Jenna Villa, second-year shooting guard, said at one of the September hearings. “And also healthcare benefits, protection as players, and just being able to have our own voice in what happens to us and make sure it’s fair.”

Haggerty and Villa spoke during hearings held in mid-September at the university’s campus.

The push from the players at OSU comes as widespread changes in the business of college sports have renewed calls to define athletes as employees of their schools. The unclear restrictions around colleges, players and the lucrative sports industry have sparked multiple lawsuits and other efforts to define the role of student-athletes.

The governing body for college sports, the NCAA, continues to argue that student-athletes are not employees, and therefore cannot enter into collective bargaining agreements. Instead, the NCAA has looked to Congress — which has remained largely inactive on the topic — to put guardrails around athlete pay on campuses.

Meanwhile, a growing number of student-athletes as well as coaches, lawmakers and professional sports unions say unionizing players and entering into collective bargaining agreements are the best ways to protect both athletes and schools from the constantly changing landscape.

“I do believe what we do is not easy and we do provide a lot for the university,” Mackenzie Shivers, third-year OSU guard, said at the September hearing.

Continuing healthcare is something Shivers would push for if the team becomes unionized. Shivers injured a ligament in her right knee during her senior year of high school, and then tore a ligament in her left knee during her first year at OSU.

“I do have some knee surgeries in my future, so I hope some things like that could be covered in the future.”

Shivers and Villa were among 10 out of 13 team members that signed the petition to unionize.

Corvallis hearings part of lengthy process

Although the process has been years in the making, the OSU women’s basketball team officially filed the paperwork this summer, asking the university to recognize them as a bargaining unit represented by the United College Athletes Association. It’s part of a wider effort among the UCAA — which was co-founded by former OSU basketball standout Mikayla Pivec — to unionize college athletes.

More than 100 women’s basketball players across the country have signed on to UCAA’s effort, which is also backed by national labor law firm O’Donoghue & O’Donoghue. It also has support from unions for professional athletes and other big labor groups.

At the end of August, OSU objected to the team’s petition.

“Playing on a college basketball team is not service performed for hire,” the school wrote in its objection. “Student-athletes at OSU matriculate to obtain an education and voluntarily pursue basketball as part of that experience. Games, practices, conditioning, and other activities develop the student-athlete’s own skills and complement her educational experience.”

OSU’s objection triggered a potentially lengthy consideration process for the state’s employment relations board. The two days of hearings this month are just the beginning.

In upcoming hearings planned for October, members of the OSU athletics staff are expected to testify.

The administrative law judge in the case is expected to forward their recommendation to the full Oregon Employment Relations Board. The three-member board can affirm the judge’s recommendation, or can reach a different determination. The earliest that is likely to happen is December.

Whatever the board decides is likely to be challenged. The challenger’s argument would determine which court picks up the case, and it could eventually be heard by the Oregon Court of Appeals.

Other college athletes have attempted to unionize in the past, but the majority of those cases were at private colleges in other states. For those efforts, athletes were seeking to be recognized as private sector employees. Their petitions for unionization would go to the National Labor Relations Board, made up of presidential appointees.

But the OSU women’s basketball team is different. Because OSU is a public university, the team is seeking to be acknowledged as public employees of the state of Oregon. That’s why the state’s employment relations board, not the NLRB, is considering the case.

Still, whatever is decided is expected to have implications across the college athletics landscape.

“A board ruling that these students are employees because they play basketball would immediately raise a host of questions across legal regimes that were never designed around college athletics,” Josh Nadreau, lawyer for OSU, said during the hearing.

Nadreau said a ruling in favor of the team would bring up more questions than answers, especially around workers’ compensation, sick leave and treatment of international students, among others.

“Those questions would arise not simply for this team, but potentially across sports and across all of Oregon’s public colleges and universities.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/22/oregon-state-university-basketball-women-sports-labor-relations/