Aides in eight liberal House offices took their next steps toward unionizing this week, beginning a long-sought and complicated process that still features many unanswered questions.
Staff for Democratic Reps. Cori Bush, Chuy Garcia, Ro Khanna, Andy Levin, Ted Lieu, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Melanie Stansbury said this week that they filed petitions to form unions that would represent 85 aides across the offices in the weeks to come.
“For far too long, congressional staff have dealt with unsafe working conditions, unlivable wages, and vast inequity in our workplaces that prevent Congress from properly representing the communities and needs of the American people,” said the Congressional Workers Union, a broader group focused on fighting for unionization rights, in a statement. “Having a seat at the bargaining table through a union will ensure we have a voice in decisions that impact our workplace.”
Unionizing in Congress is a complex prospect.
For starters, congressional offices have different budgets from which to draw salaries for staff — and those amounts are fixed once decided annually.
That makes bargaining across multiple personal member offices difficult, as even ideologically aligned members of Congress may have differences in their personnel budget and staffing structure.
Various logistical nuances between offices complicate the collective bargaining picture as well. For example, staff for a House member from California may have to contend with significantly different working hours given the time difference between their district and Washington, more travel, and different legislative issues than staff for a House member from northern Virginia, whose district may be just a car ride away.
Congressional aides working for committees or leadership offices may also have separate demands for the same members negotiating separately with aides to their personal offices, raising further questions about how congressional unionizing will work.
It’s why some Republicans have spoken out against the congressional unionization effort, even when they are generally supportive of labor rights.
“It’s like there are 535 employers,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) reportedly said in February. “I don’t know quite how that fits into any traditional union structure unless you have multiple unions.”
“The uniqueness of this institution requires flexibility. It requires each individual office to meet the unique needs of its constituency. It’s not just state by state — it’s district by district,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) said at a hearing in March.
How the congressional unions would be organized has not yet been determined.
By a 217-202 margin, Congress passed a resolution in May setting up a 60-day timeline for the unionization process to begin, activating a 1990s-era law that allowed Congress to greenlight the unionization of its staff with a resolution.
The 60-day window closed on Monday, allowing petitions for unionization to proceed.
Congressional staff had to follow detailed rules from the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights to utilize their new ability to unionize.
Those include a requirement that at least 30% of any given “bargaining unit” submit signatures indicating at least an interest in forming a union, as well as a proposal for what that unit may encompass.
The OCWR will then investigate whether the proposed unit makes sense under its “appropriateness” standards.
For a proposed bargaining unit to be considered appropriate under the labor law, the employees who hope to be covered by the unit must have a “clear and identifiable community of interest.”
If given approval, staff will then participate in a union election by secret ballot. The offices or committees employing those staff will have to have come to an agreement beforehand about specifics, such as how long an aide would have to have worked in the job before he or she could participate in the election.
At that point, staffers would cast their secret ballots on the question of whether they actually wanted to create the proposed union that resulted from this process. Those who submitted a signature indicating interest in forming one would not be bound to vote in favor of creating the union.
The unionization push on Capitol Hill has borne fruit against the backdrop of a workers’ rights resurgence around the country. Starbucks has grappled with a strong unionization movement from within its ranks, and Chipotle this week closed a store in Maine that had moved to unionize.
Ocasio-Cortez, whose staff members have moved to unionize, has experience with what a collective bargaining agreement with her employees can yield.
Her campaign workers unionized in 2020 and negotiated a contract that included a minimum wage of $18 per hour for her aides, family leave options, and a requirement for severance pay, among other things.
But campaign union negotiations work with different variables than what congressional staff will have to face.
Campaigns have far more discretion in spending and can always step up efforts to raise more cash if their financial burdens increase from something like a labor dispute. Congressional offices have only their allotted budgets from which to draw.
The popular perceptions surrounding Capitol Hill aides depict young staffers constantly under high demands while receiving low pay — a reality for many congressional aides.
An Instagram account called “Dear White Staffers” amassed a major following over the past two years by airing the grievances of struggling aides and exposing the lack of diversity among the congressional workforce.
But 7 in 8 congressional staffers earn more money than the living wage in Washington, according to a study published in January.
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The median income for House aides in 2021 was $59,000, according to the House Compensation and Diversity Study.
By contrast, the median income for the United States in 2020, the last year for which data is available from the U.S. Census Bureau, was $41,535.
The living wage for Washington exceeds the average earnings of a House staffer, which, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is $45,905 for an individual earner with no children.
