Editor’s note: This story has been updated in the online version to provide clarity about continuous appointment for faculty. 

A new agreement to boost wages for faculty was passed in a vote with more than 800 faculty in United Academics of Oregon State University on April 23.

While only the union members can vote, it will affect all academic faculty at OSU from Corvallis, Newport, Bend and all other extension offices across Oregon.

The UAOSU reached a tentative agreement with the OSU administration for a new collective bargaining agreement on April 17, according to the UAOSU website. This agreement was the product of more than a year of work from the union. Bargaining with the OSU administration for the new agreement began in January 2024.

Diana Castillo, the business and social science data librarian at OSU and union secretary, said, “One of the wins that we did get was all faculty will get a 3,000 (dollars) added to their base salary. And this is something brand new for OSU, OSU hasn’t done that kind of ‘everyone gets X amount of money added to their salary’ before.”

Castillo said that this base increase will provide more stability for faculty who have lower salaries. The increase will allow all faculty, regardless of their membership with UAOSU, to have a slightly higher wage, which could help ease stress about rent, groceries and transportation costs.

In addition to wage increases, UAOSU negotiated for increased employment stability for non-tenure-track faculty and new workload policies. Continuous employment after promotion is another perk that the union fought for.

Upon first promotion, the new contract would give instructors, faculty research assistants and research associates continuous appointment rather than contract appointment, according to Castillo.

“These are fixed term faculty (so they have contracts that need to be renewed). Upon receiving their first promotions to Senior Instructor 1, Senior Faculty Researcher 1 or Senior Research Associate 1, they would move to continuous appointment,” Castillo said over email.

The union also fought for a new workload policy for faculty. Each department at OSU has different standards and expectations for teaching. “One of the things that we got was increased faculty participation in the creation of workload policy, so making sure that the people actually doing the teaching have input,” Castillo said.

In addition to increased participation from academic faculty, this agreement also includes the freedom for workload policies to be checked and revised in the future. “We want to make sure that if faculty notice, like, there’s some changing student needs, that those are being addressed,” Castillo said.

“I think our team did a really good job. It was a really long process,” Castillo said. “They put in a lot of work to make sure that we got a deal that we could be proud of and that we could encourage our members to vote for.”