39E THE HILL
Congressional staers
want to unionize—and
the moment may be ripe
By Abby Vesoulis
CONGRESSIONAL STAFFERS SPEND LATE
nights and weekends helping broker deals
and write the laws that govern the U.S.
Many do so on salaries so scant they qual-
ify for the welfare beneits they help legis-
late. And they’re sick of putting up with it.
On a Thursday afternoon in February,
11 Democratic House stafers convened,
via Zoom, to discuss their plan to union-
ize both chambers of Congress for the irst
time in history. The stafers, who repre-
sent the still aspirational Congressional
Workers Union (CWU), have two goals.
The irst is to get both the House and Sen-
ate to pass resolutions granting them legal
protections to unionize. The second is to
leverage the power unionization would
provide to improve their lot. “It’s a privi-
lege to work here,” says one stafer, “but
it shouldn’t be a privilege to earn a living
wage here.”
A recent analysis of 2020 data by
Issue One, a nonproit political- reform
group, showed that 13% of Washington-
based Congress stafers—roughly 1,200
people—earn less than $42,610 annually.
That’s the amount, according to a Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology living-
wage calculator, needed to cover bare-min-
imum essentials like rent and groceries in
Washington, D.C., the ifth most expensive
city in the nation. Young people who come
from working-class families often can’t af-
ford to take such low-paying jobs—which
hurts their own careers and exacerbates
the lack of low-income and minority rep-
resentation in Congress.
While a handful of Hill stafers have
been whispering about unionizing since
December 2020, the efort lacked momen-
tum. That changed in February, when top
Democratic leaders, including President
Joe Biden’s White House, announced they
would, in theory, back a unionized con-
gressional workforce. Within weeks, CWU
was looded with interest from hundreds
of stafers. “It had been snowballing pretty
smoothly,” says one CWU member, “until
that week created an avalanche.”