U. Oregon agrees to ‘respect’ pronouns, bump salaries 42% to avoid grad students’ strike

The University of Oregon narrowly avoided a strike from its graduate student workers union this week by agreeing to salary increases as high as 42 percent, all-gender bathrooms, and “respect” for student workers’ preferred pronouns.

The tentative agreement, announced late Monday, comes after a nearly year-long negotiation process. The Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, which represents about 1,400 graduate student workers at the public university, had planned to go on strike Wednesday if an agreement had not been reached.

“We believe that this contract will enable our members to live with dignity in the Eugene area, and will benefit GEs at the UO for years to come by bringing up the salary floor of our entire bargaining unit,” the union said in a statement late Monday.