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Aides wait outside of the Senate Democrats luncheon in the U.S. Capitol on November 2, 2021.
Tonight marked the culmination of a monthslong organizing effort from the Congressional Workers Union (CWU). In a 217-to-202 party-line vote, the House passed Rep. Andy Levin’s (D-MI) resolution allowing nearly 10,000 House staffers to organize under the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act (CAA). In an interview with the Prospect, Levin said, “It’s past time to allow our staffers to form their own organizations.”
The resolution implements a provision of the CAA that’s been dormant for congressional staffers since 1996, when lawmakers allowed federal employees to unionize, but not their staffers. Though the Senate is unlikely to pass a similar resolution from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) because it lacks 60 votes, Levin explained that, in the same way that the House can’t abolish the filibuster, the Senate can’t impede his resolution. So House workers can begin to organize for a contract right away.
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), who voted against the PRO Act, which would have allowed workers to organize, voted for the resolution.
The resolution’s passage comes more than 100 days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled her support for congressional staffers after announcing a $45,000-a-year minimum salary for House staffers. The CWU told the Prospect that it was thrilled to have Pelosi’s support. “We do see the Speaker as a real partner,” one member said.
The Prospect spoke to three members of the CWU’s organizing committee who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from their bosses.
Last night’s resolution was an opportunity to put “leadership’s feet to the fire,” one of the union organizers said, and test whether or not their bosses are prepared to ensure the right to collectively bargain for every worker, including those in their offices. Before yesterday’s vote, 165 lawmakers, all of whom were Democrats, had signed onto Levin’s resolution.
UNTIL THE 117TH CONGRESS, CWU organizers explained, the culture fostered on Capitol Hill was one of never speaking out against poor working conditions. Staffers handle a large workload for meager pay, with starting salaries (before the newly announced minimums) of around $30,000 to $35,000 for a 60-hour-per-week job, sometimes nearing 70 hours for stretches of time. Any all-night legislative session for the House or Senate means more time at work for staff.
Although hidden from the limelight, low-paid congressional workers are the ones who interact with the public most directly, providing remediation for whatever concerns they might have. Instances like President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and delayed tax payments owed by the IRS during the pandemic overextended caseworkers who were already stretched thin, even as legislative offices struggled to stay open due to COVID concerns and high infection rates.
Many of those who work on Capitol Hill genuinely want to make a positive impact through government, CWU members stated. However, the process of securing a job is a hustle of its own. Some hop from internship to internship, many of which can be unpaid or pay very little, in the hopes of potentially landing a full-time job. That process often becomes self-selecting. In 2020, 89 percent of top Senate aides and 81 percent of top House aides were white. The current pipeline system, CWU members told the Prospect, disincentivizes individuals without independent wealth, exacerbated by economic class stratification across racial demographics, from pursuing a career of public service.
What happens instead is an environment with a high turnover rate and low morale. This dynamic, according to CWU, leads to introspective questions: Do lawmakers believe in democracy in the workplace, particularly when it’s their office? Or what does it mean when governing institutions pay the least to those who work most with the public?
The dots connected throughout the pandemic. CWU members described how some congressional offices disregarded the health of their workers. One example given was about elected officials or chiefs of staff testing positive for COVID-19 without telling the other staffers. A CWU organizer told the Prospect that this translated to a sense of “disposability,” resulting in a fearful environment that leaves staffers hindered from doing their job.
And the culmination of this was the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021, when their workplace literally became a battleground. That accelerated a growing problem of worker retention. The average tenure of staff in the House is around three years. Last year, CWU said, the turnover rate was the worst it has ever been.
The result is that staffers who initially come to Washington wanting to do public service soon thereafter enter the private sector as lobbyists. CWU members explained that last year, the lobbying industry spent $2.47 billion on an estimated 11,000 staff, while Congress spent $1.48 billion on approximately 9,000 staffers.
While a multitude of factors influence the revolving door, and a union wouldn’t stop the practice entirely, CWU workers said that a union would at least give staffers the opportunity to stay in public service. Many staffers leave the Hill because it’s incompatible with markers of adulthood like starting a family and buying a house.
The sentiment isn’t just limited to one party either. CWU organizers told the Prospect that Republican congressional staffers are also sick of being impeded in their ability to do their jobs because of the outsized influence of lobbyists and other special-interest groups.
YESTERDAY’S VOTE IS JUST THE BEGINNING of what CWU expects to be a long process that will show whether lawmakers and senior staff truly can walk the talk. As one organizer put it, “Negotiating in good faith with the CWU is an opportunity for our bosses to do their jobs better.”
Levin, himself a former union organizer, explained that he told his staff that if they wanted to form a union unaffiliated with CWU, his office would recognize them. But at the same time, he worried that a union that does not represent all congressional workers would essentially create a blacklist for staffers after they left his office.
Most of the feedback across the Hill is supportive, according to one CWU member. But in the long run, they said, “Management has a vested interest in dissuading us from the [bargaining] table.” The criticism CWU hears about their organizing effort mirrors the same dynamics that workers across the country have experienced. While organizers refrained from describing it as retaliation, they said that stories have circulated about management telling employees that they can negotiate for workplace improvements through non-collective-bargaining efforts, or that some things that CWU is asking for are entirely impossible.
CWU added that, even though reports say they wouldn’t be able to negotiate their wages, that’s without a factual basis. Under the Congressional Accountability Act, they are granted those rights by the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights. “It’s not up to management to say how this process works out,” noted one CWU member.
I asked the CWU about where their organizing efforts fit into the larger narrative of a resurgent labor movement across the country. One staffer told me, “It’s about time it reached the halls of Congress.” The CWU has developed a keen synthesis between understanding that Congress is not working as it should, and how improvement in their working conditions can facilitate a more democratic process. They said that many congressional staffers don’t have prior labor organizing experience; however, they’ve seen up close how corporate power, intentionally wrought by federal policy, has decimated the economy and the power workers once had.
A union “gives us a voice,” one member added. “We carry out democracy every day, but we don’t have it in our offices.”
