Dive Brief:
- Graduate student teaching assistants at the University of Oregon went on strike Tuesday and are walking picket lines.
- Bargainers for the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation and the university are scheduled to meet today with a mediator, the Register-Guard reported.
- A new Board of Trustees took control of the university from the state in July, and the negotiations with the graduate students’ union are the first to reach an impasse under the new leadership.
Dive Insight:
The union demanded two weeks of paid medical or parental leave. The university rejected the demand, partly because it didn’t want to also extend benefits to 5,500 part-time instructors who aren’t part of the union. The university countered with a proposed medical or childbirth “hardship fund” that all graduate students could access in an emergency. But the idea fizzled when the university rejected the union’s demand to put the details in writing in the contract. The last strike for the university was in 1995, lasting less than a week, by the Service Employees International Union representing the school’s classified workers.
