Posts tagged Dina Titus
Why longtime labor ally Dina Titus quietly helped kill efforts to unionize her office, ex-staff say
June 24, 2025 // In a statement to The Nevada Independent, Titus said that she “actually welcomed a union because I thought it would help standardize operations and bring more accountability to the office.” She referred to ex-staffers’ stories as “unsubstantiated claims by former, anonymous, disgruntled employees.” “Jobs in my office are hard jobs and I have high standards,” Titus said. “I demand a lot of my staff but no more than I demand of myself because I believe that’s what the people of District 1 deserve. I’m not apologizing for this. People don’t send us back here and pay our salaries to drink lattes and view Tik-Tok from 9-5, Mon.-Fri. That’s not how my constituents’ lives work.” But the behaviors Titus, who turned 75 in May, displayed during and after the unionization effort demonstrate why, the ex-staffers said, they felt the need to collectively organize and push for more formal office policies in the first place. “It felt like everybody else should be unionizing [and] can unionize,” one staffer said. “But when it came to our office, and it came to actually impacting her — that's when labor did not matter anymore.”
Senate Democrats offer resolution to let staff organize
June 26, 2023 // Sen. Sherrod Brown and 19 of his Senate colleagues introduced a resolution Thursday that would extend legal protections to staffers who unionize. The group of pro-labor Democrats, plus Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, comes a year after the House adopted a resolution allowing its employees to organize. “Every worker should have a right to organize and have a voice in their workplace — and that is why I have spent my career fighting for the dignity of work,” Brown said in a statement. “With this resolution, we can finally secure the fundamental legal right of U.S. Senate staff to join together as union members to advocate for themselves and have a voice on the job.”
Labor unions expand into legislator offices
January 23, 2023 // “Unionizing staffers in legislative offices makes no sense because it creates more problems than it solves,” says Brigette Herbst, senior organizing director for AFFT and a former state legislative staffer, “How does unionization work with the long and unpredictable hours during a legislative session? How will elected officials handle untrustworthy staffers? Union organizers haven’t answered these important questions.” Labor unions have also turned their focus to legislative staffers at the state level.
What’s next for staffer unions on the Hill?
November 1, 2022 // Staff for another five members — all Democrats — have filed petitions with the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights to hold elections. Since the initial eight offices filed petitions when they were first allowed to in July, only two more have done so — staff for Reps. Dina Titus of Nevada and Sean Casten of Illinois. If all form unions, around 100 House staffers out of 9,100 will be represented by the Congressional Workers Union.