‘Hypocritical.’ Here’s why California lawmakers want to end the ban on unions for their staff

A national, youth-driven wave of unionizing could soon reach the California State Legislature, where a new proposal would allow collective bargaining for the first time for legislative employees.

A half-dozen lawmakers announced the proposal Tuesday outside the state Capitol, citing other states that have recently allowed legislative staff to unionize and efforts to do so among congressional staffers in Washington, D.C.

The proposal from the progressive wing of Democrats in the Legislature would allow the roughly 1,900 people who work in the two chambers of the Capitol to collectively bargain over pay, benefits and working conditions.

Lawmakers on Tuesday characterized the Legislature as hypocritical for supporting collective bargaining everywhere except for in their own building.

“We walk picket lines, we stand with our brothers and sisters in labor all the time except when it comes to our own house,” said Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Santa Cruz, who co-authored Assembly Bill 1577.

Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, a coauthor, said he was ready to change a practice “which I believe is hypocritical, I believe is immoral.”

The proposal would mark a significant expansion of collective bargaining for public employees in California, where the rank-and-file civil service workforce gained the right to collectively bargain in 1977, but legislative employees were exempted.

It’s not clear what the bill’s prospects are moving forward. Similar proposals introduced by former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, failed.

This time, lawmakers used a legislative maneuver that removed language from an active bill and rewrote it. It faces a Sept. 30 deadline to clear both chambers and be signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Mike Genest, a former finance director for former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, called the proposal, which would likely lead to the end of at-will employment for legislative staffers, “insane.”

Genest said that while he supports civil service protections for rank-and-file state employees, employment in political offices requires things like discretion that he said are impossible to assess in the kind of performance evaluations used in civil service.

Additionally, he raised questions about newly elected politicians being forced to retain employees of another political party, or from another wing of the Democratic party, since Republicans have become a small minority in the Legislature.

Firings are common with changes in administration, he said, but if at-will employment goes away, a newly elected moderate Democrat could be forced to retain a progressive employee with different priorities, he said.

“They have different points of view on different issues,” he said. “And they should be able to appoint people who agree with them.”

Undervalued work

The bill would deliver collective bargaining rights to a workforce that includes many recent college graduates who seek meaning from their work in the Legislature and have been making sacrifices to do so, including the prospect of better pay elsewhere, said Alan Moore, 32, a staffer in the office of Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco.

Moore said the benefits are good — legislative staffers are eligible for CalPERS pensions and quality health care — but the pay doesn’t go far. Moore makes about $51,800 per year, according to an online pay roster.

“It does help to help people, but it would be nice to get help too,” said Moore, who said he has worked for the Legislature since 2017.

Among the supporters of the proposal is Assemblyman Alex Lee, D-San Jose, the Legislature’s youngest member and a recent legislative staffer himself.

“I think there is a culture that has unfortunately undervalued the work you all do,” said Lee.

Public employee unions in other states

The lawmakers cited organizing efforts at Starbucks and Amazon as well as new efforts by other public employees, including in Congress.

Legislative staffers in Oregon voted to unionize last year, becoming the first in the nation to do so, according to an ABC News affiliate there.

Legislation has been introduced in Massachusetts, and organizing is underway in Washington, said Jen Sherer, a senior state policy coordinator for the Worker Power program at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C.

At the same time, some states are moving in the opposite direction, said Sherer, citing Wisconsin legislators’ actions in 2011 to strip collective bargaining rights from many public employees.

In Sacramento on Tuesday, some female lawmakers and staffers cited sexual harassment as a factor in the push for unionization, which Sherer said has also played a role elsewhere.

“One motivator has been abuses of power, including sexual harassment,” she said. “Those are issues that workers in any occupation really deserve the ability to address collectively and that’s what the collective bargaining process would do.”

This story was originally published May 25, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘Hypocritical.’ Here’s why California lawmakers want to end the ban on unions for their staff."