Graduate Employees at Oregon State University began organizing in the mid-1990s in response to OSU’s refusal to provide health insurance coverage. By 1999, a majority of Graduate Teaching Assistants united to petition for official recognition as a labor union. We won our union election by an overwhelming majority and bargained our first contract in 2001.

In 2012, CGE began a concerted effort to expand the bargaining unit to include Graduate Research Assistants. At the time, OSU insisted that GRAs were not employees of the university and thus not eligible to unionize. We disagreed. By 2013, as a result of dedicated organizing, we won an expansion of our bargaining unit to include hundreds of GRAs, nearly doubling our union’s size.

In 2024, in response to stalled contract negotiations, CGE authorized the first strike in its 25-year history. As a result of this concerted action—where hundreds of workers sacrificed nearly one month’s pay to win a fair contract-–we won a 13% increase to the minimum salary and preserved many of the rights OSU was trying to strip away.

Today, we continue the fight for fair pay and working conditions. We can only do that with your support. Join your union today to help us shape our future at OSU.