“While not all offices and committees face the same working conditions, we strongly believe that to better serve our constituents will require meaningful changes to improve retention, equity, diversity, and inclusion on Capitol Hill. That starts with having a voice in the workplace,” the group said in a statement. “We call on all congressional staff to join in the effort to unionize, and look forward to meeting management at the table.”
A survey distributed by the Congressional Progressive Staff Association last month and cited in the statement found that 91 percent of staff surveyed want more protections to give them a voice at work.
The move comes as public favorability for unions is at an all-time high and as unionization grips parts of the political world, from the Democratic National Committee to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to state legislative staff members in Oregon. But Hill staffers received their biggest endorsement Tuesday when White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that President Biden “supports the right of any individual to seek to join a union, to collective bargain, and, of course, Capitol Hill staffers are certainly individuals who are pursuing that.”
“I think in the past year, we’ve really seen a moment of reckoning for the Democratic Party,” three Hill staffers who are part of the CWU organizing committee told our colleague Marianna Sotomayor. “I think it’s a moment where Democrats recognize that we need to or we ought to lead by example, and are beginning to take that more and more seriously.”
It’s unclear how unionization on the Hill will move forward, but the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act provides the legal framework for Hill staff to unionize. Lawmakers never adopted a resolution needed to enact the language and Hill aides were excluded from organizing. Other congressional employees like the Capitol Police and Architect of the Capitol staff were not.
Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) will formally introduce a resolution that would grant congressional aides the right to organize and bargain collectively on the floor today when the House is in session. The CAA affords aides the right to unionize once each chamber passes a resolution.
The resolution is necessary because it gives staffers legal guarantees, the three Hill staffers said. “There will be a binding process for workers to elect the union and to require their boss to go to the bargaining table. Without that, it’s all totally voluntary.”
If Congress adopts the resolution, aides can begin organizing office-by-office, but given the massive outpouring of support from lawmakers, the three Hill staffers predicted that it’s only a matter of time before “you see a large number of offices that would start engaging in collective bargaining.”
The staffers told Sotomayor that they plan on organizing independently, instead of joining an existing union.
The CWU also wants to unionize congressional committees. The Office of Congressional Workplace Rights relies on a precedent set by the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which governs labor relations between the federal government and its employees, the staffers said. “They determine an appropriate unit, by what’s called a community of interest and that uses a series of different factors, including whether they have the same mission, same organizational structure [or] same chain of command.”
Under that standard, “it would be perfectly appropriate to have different units for the majority or the minority staff,” they continued. “But it also does not seem to require the chairman from having the committee staff be in the same bargaining unit as their personal office. They can organize separately or together.”
GOP staffers welcome
More than 80 lawmakers, including Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) have expressed their full support for staff unionization efforts, according to a tally kept by the liberal nonprofit Demand Progress.
“I’m here for them. It’s their organizing campaign,” Levin told Sotomayor. “When [Pelosi] said what she said, they were like, ‘Let’s go’ … They literally came to me at that time, and said, ‘We want this introduced and we want you to introduce it.’”
“The workers in our personal office staff and on committee staff have the same human right that every other worker has to form a union and bargain collectively,” Levin added.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have endorsed unionization in recent days, galvanizing the Hill staffers organizing the effort.
“We’re just so excited about the Speaker’s support for our right to organize and the support of so many different members of Congress,” the three Hill staffers said. “It’s such an important step toward actually passing this resolution and ending our own exclusion from labor law.”
The unionization effort is likely to face a tougher road in the Senate. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) expressed skepticism about the push Tuesday, and aides will need 60 votes to adopt the resolution. Still, the three Hill aides “expect some additional action on the Senate side as well, relatively soon.”
The CWU also stressed that unionization is open to both parties: “We want to make sure that all Republican staff feel welcomed by the Congressional Workers Union, and also recognize that they also have the right to unionize.”
But two House GOP leaders oppose congressional organizing, raising questions about whether unionization efforts will continue if Republicans regain the majority in the fall.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) told Punchbowl News that organizing wouldn’t be “productive for the government,” and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) told reporters that she does not support “unionizing on the Hill.”
Despite these setbacks, the three Hill staffers told Sotomayor, “nothing’s going to stop the Congressional Workers Union from organizing.”
Mitch McConnell on reforming the ECA: ‘I’d be inclined to support it'
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a modicum of support reforming the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 law that a bipartisan group are senators are working to update after Donald Trump tried to exploit its ambiguities to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election. But with the next presidential election nearly three years away, he's not in any rush.
“If it were narrowly crafted to deal with the Electoral Count Act, which definitely needs fixing, I’d be inclined to support it,” McConnell told the Washington Examiner's David Drucker in a Tuesday evening interview. "Whether the Democrats can resist the urge to turn it into a Christmas tree with all the stuff we just went through, I don’t know. But what I do know for sure is it’s not urgent.”
On K Street
Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick racks in fundraising from Trump administration alumni
Annals of fundraising: David McCormick, the former hedge fund executive running for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, is getting some fundraising help from some high-profile Trump administration alumni.
Reince Priebus, Trump’s first White House chief of staff; Hope Hicks, Trump’s White House communications director; Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel; and the Trump administration Treasury Department officials Tony Sayegh and Drew Maloney are among the hosts of a McCormick fundraiser next week in Washington, according to an invitation obtained by The Early.
McCormick is married to the former Trump White House official Dina Powell, and Trump administration officials were among those who encouraged him to run. (Not every former Trump administration official is backing McCormick, though; former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross maxed out to McCormick’s Republican primary rival Mehmet Oz in December, according to a campaign finance filing.)
McCormick served in the Treasury Department during George W. Bush’s administration, and several Bush alumni are among the nearly three dozen people co-hosting the Feb. 16 fundraiser, according to the invitation. So are many of Wall Street’s representatives in Washington, including Bryan Corbett of the Managed Funds Association, Kevin Fromer of the Financial Services Forum, Rob Nichols of the American Bankers Association and the lobbyists Joe Wall of Goldman Sachs, Jamie Wall of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and Candi Wolff of Citigroup.
Other lobbyists listed as co-hosts include Brian Ballard of Ballard Partners, a top fundraiser for Trump’s campaigns; Kirk Blalock of Fierce Government Relations; Mat Lapinski of Crossroads Strategies; Jim Richards of Cornerstone Government Affairs; Manny Rossman of Harbinger Strategies and Shawn Smeallie of ACG Advocacy.
The price of admission: $1,000. Those who want the “host” title must give $2,900, while co-chairs need to shell out $5,800 each.
The campaign
RNC's defense of Jan. 6 as ‘legitimate political discourse’ sparks rift among Republicans
An editing mystery: "When the Republican Party voted to censure two of its own members of Congress last week at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City, it justified the move in part by declaring that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection amounted to the persecution of individuals engaging in 'legitimate political discourse,'" our colleagues Josh Dawsey and Felicia Sonmez report.
How did those three words — which have sparked a massive backlash from many Republicans — get in there? No one seems to know:
- The phrase “did not appear in an original draft of the resolution by top Trump ally David Bossie, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post. Instead, Bossie’s version said the committee had a disregard for ‘minority rights’ and ‘due process’ and seemed ‘intent on advancing a political agenda to buoy the Democrat Party’s bleak electoral prospects.’ It is unclear how the words ‘legitimate political discourse’ came to enter the document as it was edited in Salt Lake City by Bossie,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and others.
- "Several RNC members said it was frustrating that, aside from a small number of resolution committee members on Thursday afternoon, no one else saw the text of the resolution until 1:38 a.m. Friday, when the document showed up in inboxes of the committee’s members. It was not read or presented aloud before it was voted on nine hours later."
What we’re reading:
“You picked the wrong woman today.”
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