Posts tagged Andy Levin
Effort by Michigan House staffers poses test to Democrats’ pro-union credentials
April 1, 2024 // Each representative decides what to pay their workers Those who work in the Michigan Legislature describe it as a workplace defined by high turnover, unwritten rules and a lack of boundaries respecting staffers' time. All 110 state representatives manage their own offices. But unlike workplaces in the private sector, barring an expulsion, state representatives who are poor managers can only be fired by voters in their districts.
After a year of organizing, staff union leaders look ahead to collective bargaining
May 11, 2023 // While it’s been months since OCWR certified the first staff union elections, waiting times are normal in collective bargaining. According to a Bloomberg Law analysis, the average CBA takes 465 days to sign after a union election, although a good chunk (47 percent) take less than a year. “What's really interesting about this process is we are inventing the wheel of how negotiating works in Congress,” said Laudick. “Members of Congress are having to learn about what this relationship looks like. And those members, as much as they tout that they're very pro-union and that they are for unions, they've never sat at the negotiating table. They have no clue how this works.” That extends to some of the top-level congressional aides in supervisory positions, who are considered management under federal labor law. “We heard a lot of chiefs of staff asking if they could join [the union] last year,” said Laudick.
Unionize the Senate, staffers urge
February 9, 2023 // Labor advocates are pushing the Senate to recognize staff unions, in the hopes of kickstarting progress in the chamber now that their House organizing efforts have stalled under Republican control. The Congressional Workers Union sent a letter Thursday to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Rules and Administration Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Bernie Sanders, demanding a vote by the end of the month on a resolution authorizing Senate offices to unionize.
Unanswered questions surround unionizing effort by congressional staffers
July 26, 2022 // 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. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, House Compensation and Diversity Study, Census Bureau, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Dear White Staffers” Speaks: Inside the Effort to Unionize Capitol Hill
July 19, 2022 // To join the CWU, a simple majority of workers in a given Hill office must vote to unionize. Each House office that joins CWU will serve as its own collective bargaining unit represented by members elected from their own ranks. How things will unfold on the Senate side still isn’t settled. “I don’t know what the process is,” said Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown on Monday. “It’s up to the Rules Committee, I assume.”