Now eligible for a union, legislative staffers are organizing across California
The effort to unionize legislative staff is underway in California’s Capitol — and across the state — after a 2023 bill went into effect last week allowing these public employees to organize.
The organizing campaign is still in its early stages: District staffers in the Bay Area are having one-on-one conversations with their colleagues in Southern California district offices; Capitol-based staffers are discussing priorities for the would-be union, and organizers are weighing options about which union they might eventually join.
“I believe fundamentally in our right to unionize, but I also believe that it’s going to be challenging in many respects,” said Zak Castillo-Krings, the legislative director for Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, who has been involved in the organizing effort. “If we do choose to unionize, it’s not going to be a straight, cookie-cutter path to what that looks like.”
There isn’t much precedent for organizing a Legislature. Oregon’s Capitol staffers secured their first contract with the state in 2023, and Maine allowed nonpartisan legislative workers to unionize in the 1990s, but California is the first full-time Legislature to allow Capitol staffers to form a union.
The unprecedented circumstances, and the dispersed nature of the workplace present unique challenges for the organizing effort, which has been underway in various stages since California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 1, authored by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, D-Inglewood, in 2023.
“I’m so happy that they’ll have an opportunity to unionize,” McKinnor said in an interview shortly before her law went into effect.
The bill that went into effect July 1 enacted the Legislature Employer-Employee Relations Act, which is analogous to the law that governs collective bargaining between California and state employees, known as the Ralph C. Dills Act.
Now that her bill is in effect, legislative staffers have to make the decision of which union will represent them and how their labor group might be divided, McKinnor said.
Status of the unionization effort
According to one legislative staffer with knowledge of the unionization effort, organizers are in the process of expanding the organizing committee to help reach out to all employees in the Legislature, which includes those who work in district offices across the state. Organizers have been in talks with labor groups to help determine strategies for how to unionize the Legislature.
The staffer, who asked to remain anonymous due to a fear of retaliation, said that there are ongoing discussions about which union workers will eventually decide to affiliate with, or whether staff will decide to represent themselves as an independent employee association, similar to some state worker unions such as the Professional Engineers in California Government. The organizing committee hopes to determine which union, if any, legislative employees will unionize with before the end of the year, the staffer said.
At this point in the process there is a structure to the organizing committee, the staffer said, but there is not a single head of the operation.
“We absolutely respect employees’ right to choose to unionize,” Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco, D-Downey, said in a statement. “Should legislative employees exercise that right, the Assembly will be prepared to engage in good faith collective bargaining.”
Pacheco serves as the chair of the Assembly Rules Committee, which essentially serves as the employer of the Assembly staff. She said it would be premature to discuss the collective bargaining process at this stage of the unionization effort. The Senate Rules Committee handles employment matters for the Senate staff.
Priorities include comp time, clear promotional structure
Both Juan Rodriguez and Tuan Nguyen, who work in the district office of Assemblymember Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, have been involved in the organizing effort.
Rodriguez, a field representative, said it has been nice to connect with staffers in other district offices across the state. He said working in some offices can be isolating in regions that are far away from other district offices.
Last week, he said legislative staffers from various offices got together for a happy-hour meetup to celebrate the enactment of the bill and discuss top priorities and potential solutions to workplace issues.
“That’s one of the things that we look forward to — to not just be able to relate with one another, but to work with one another and with Assembly Rules to enhance the workplace and be able to better serve our constituents,” Rodriguez said.
Nguyen, a senior field representative, said one priority that has been discussed is establishing more structure around promotions and title changes. He said the current system relies on a complex series of negotiations involving staffers, members and the rules committees. It was a year after he first requested a promotion that Nguyen ultimately received his new title.
“A couple of staff have been here for three, four years, they’ve been amazing colleagues, and they never had a title change that should have reflected their growth, their experience, their advancement in this field,” Nguyen said.
Another priority for employees, legislative staffers said, was getting fairly compensated for working after hours and on weekends.
“There’s no policy for comp time, right?” said Castillo-Krings. “I think workers want to have more say than just hoping that they get a half day before Thanksgiving recess, or something like that.”
Rodriguez said better wages have been a major priority discussed among legislative staff members. Specific measures, like getting reimbursed for parking, have come up in discussions, he said, as ways to address the financial strain many legislative staffers face.
Castillo-Krings, Rodriguez and Nguyen all said that they enjoyed working with their respective members, but not all staffers have the same experience. One of the goals of the unionization process is to ensure there is uniformity in expectations and working conditions across the Legislature.
Organizing challenges
Lorena Gonzalez, the president of the California Labor Federation and a former assemblymember who proposed legislation nearly a decade ago to allow these workers to unionize said organizing the Legislature presents unique challenges.
“This is a large swath of area you got to collect cards from,” Gonzalez said, referring to the process of certifying a union. “It’s literally the entire state.”
Organizers need to talk with people working in Assembly and Senate district offices spread across California, in addition to the legislative employees who work in the Capitol. This “highly dispersed” workplace could make organizing more difficult than other job sites, Gonzalez said.
Another unique characteristic of the Legislature that could make unionization more challenging is that there is a high turnover rate among legislative staffers, and they often move between chambers, she said.
Asked what role, if any, the California Labor Federation had in the organizing effort, Gonzalez said the federation doesn’t discuss the particulars of any organizing drive prior to it being public.
Gonzalez said working conditions at the Capitol have improved since she worked as a staffer, and later as a lawmaker, but there is still room for improvement.
“When you start talking about a union, some of the biggest gripes do get fixed, right?” she said. “So the hope or threat, if you will, of unionization starts to correct bad behavior.”
