OSU Graduate Employees Ratify Their New Contracts

The vote on Monday, December 9 officially ends the union’s first-ever strike and resolves a contract dispute that began more than a year ago, at the start of negotiations. The agreement, however, does not meet some of the union’s key demands.

Members of the Graduate Employees Coalition, which represents about 1,700 OSU graduate workers, voted 93 percent to ratify the tentative agreement reached last weekend, according to a statement from union official Rachael Garcia.

The new contract lasts three years, which Garcia touted as a way to ensure graduates have a say in their working conditions throughout their time at OSU.

Previously, the union had demanded a four-year agreement with the possibility of reopening certain mandates after two years. OSU had proposed a five-year deal with no reopening clause.

OSU then accepted the union’s proposal for a period of three years.

The new contract also includes a 13% increase in the minimum salary of graduate employees during the first year of the agreement. This is significantly lower than the 50% increase that graduate employees had previously demanded in previous proposals.

As a reminder, salaries for graduate employees are capped at approximately half of a full-time equivalent rate, and the most a graduate employee could previously earn was just over $2,100 per month, before taxes.

The minimum they can earn, about $1,700 a month, will increase to about $1,990 under the new deal, according to Garcia.

In addition to the merit raises for returning graduate employees previously agreed to in recent rounds of mediation, the tentative agreement reached last week also includes an agreement that OSU proposed to pay workers their raises dating back to September 16 – whether employees accurately report hours not worked during the mediation period. the strike.

This was a sticking point before the two sides reached an agreement on Friday (Dec. 6), with union officials expressing concern about the administrative burden it could place on salaried employees, who do not normally track their hours in such detail .

Asked about the gap between the union’s initial request for a raise and its landing target, union President Austin Bosgraaf pointed to members’ overwhelming approval of the new deal.

With exam week beginning, Bosgraaf said graduating students are busy ensuring a smooth transition to work. That includes making sure employees record time missed during their more than three-week strike, a challenge for employees with varying work schedules, he said.

In a brief statement from OSU, spokeswoman Lanesha Reagan said the university was pleased to share the news of the ratification.

For Andrea Retano, a graduate research assistant in OSU’s horticulture department, the final deal wasn’t what employees deserved, but it was the best they could get. Still, in a phone call, Retano said returning to work is a welcome change.

“It was nice to get back to a sense of normalcy,” she said.