The Oregon Employment Relations Board has ruled that graduate research assistants at Oregon State University are employees and have the right to collective bargaining, The Corvallis Gazette-Times reported. The university has maintained that the research assistants should be seen primarily as students, and thus ineligible for unionization. The ruling clears the way for a vote by the research assistants on whether they should be represented by a local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, which already represents teaching assistants at Oregon State.