University of Oregon faculty have ratified a collective bargaining agreement, officially taking a strike off the table.
An email sent by United Academics of UO president Mike Urbancic to union members Friday afternoon said 97% of the faculty members who cast a ballot voted to ratify the deal. The email said that at the time, 76% of faculty members had voted.
The tentative agreement with the university was initially reached March 30, hours before a potential strike was set to begin.
While the deal was overwhelmingly approved by union members, Urbancic wrote that there is still room for improvement in the future.
"This new collective bargaining agreement is a fairer contract, but not yet a fair contract," Urbancic wrote. "There is a lot of work stlll to be done to improve pay and working conditions in the next contract and beyond. This time around we--on both sides--have been limited in what we could accomplish by internal financial constraints resulting from inadequate planning over the last few years as well as by wholly unanticipated external financial and political constraints."
