After comments by Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, and the Biden administration, which indicated their support for the effort’s progress it has gained momentum quickly.
The jobs on Capitol Hill can be very competitive and provide a platform for more lucrative work elsewhere. The hours are long and the pay is low. Expectations from legislators can also be high. The cost of living in Washington only makes it more difficult for them to make ends meet.
The Congressional Workers Union announced last week that it was attempting to unionize staff. They tweeted that, while not all offices or committees have the same working conditions but that “we strongly believe that in order to better serve our constituents, meaningful changes will be required to improve retention, diversity, and inclusion on Capitol Hill.” It starts with being heard in the workplace.
Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) introduced Wednesday’s bill that would authorize unionization. He stated that legislation passed in 1990s applied almost a dozen employee protection law to the legislative branch. He said that Congress did not take the necessary final steps to protect their staffs. He stated that his bill would take the final step.
Levin stated, “There is no reason for delay,”
It is not clear what form the unionization effort might take. Individual members of Congress have Congressional aides. The fixed allowance that lawmakers receive to run their offices is a fixed amount. They have great flexibility to spend the money however they like to pay for supplies, personnel and rental costs. According to the Congressional Research Service, the average allowance was $1.44million in 2020.
Levin stated that the congressional staff would be driving the unionization process, and that questions about how it would work are “appropriate for another day.”
Levin stated, “My colleagues are listening to workers and taking this critical first step to get done something we should have done decades ago: recognize the congressional workers’ right of organization without fear or retaliation.”
The Biden White House sought to enact policies to strengthen labor unions. In recent weeks, workers from Democratic groups like the Democratic National Committee or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee moved to unionize.
