With support from U.S. Rep. Pressley, State House staffers keep union pressure alive

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Massachusetts State Senate staffers seeking to form a union hit a snag in their quest last July, when Senate Speaker Karen Spilka told them the legislature saw no way forward on unionization.

A year later, however, supporters of the State House staff organizing effort are still pushing ahead. They hope to change the law that prevents them from collective bargaining and believe they will eventually succeed in this uphill battle.

It’s going to take as long as it takes, but as I say in our meetings with elected officials, this thing is going to end either with the law passing or with legislative staff telling us they’re done, said Kevin Holland, vice president and assistant business manager for IBEW 2222, who worked to organize staff members. And the legislative staff is far from telling us that they’re done, so they’ve been here for as long as it takes.

Holland spoke at a virtual briefing for lawmakers and staff on Monday, which highlighted a pair of bills that would extend collective bargaining rights to legislative staff.

The state’s collective bargaining law for public sector employees only applies to members of the executive or judiciary, and Senate leaders last year highlighted the law as one of many complications preventing union recognition.

IBEW Local 2222 representatives delivered a letter to Spilka in March 2022, asking him to voluntarily recognize a bargaining unit after a majority of Senate employees signed union permission cards.

On Monday, Holland said union organizers had not yet reached that majority threshold among House staffers, but were at just over two-thirds. Towards the end of the roughly hour-long briefing, he said three staff members had recently signed cards during the call.

During the briefing, US Representative Ayanna Pressley told staff members that she viewed their organizing drive as a winnable fight. She recalled her own experience working as an assistant on Capitol Hill and said she had waited tables for some of those years to supplement her salary.

I know what it’s like to be part of a workforce where you feel invisible, and especially as an aide to an elected official, you do the day-to-day work of centering the humanity and dignity of people who feel invisible, helpless, hopeless, Pressley said. You are their lifeline, pushing policies to help their families thrive, while at the same time you can barely get by or live and endure a lot of the indignities that people have mistaken for the experience of being a helper.

House and Senate leaders announced pay increases for staffers last summer, on the heels of a 2021 cost-of-living hike.

Former employee Shelly MacNeill worked at Beacon Hill for more than 20 years and said pay was one of the reasons she left last year. She said another was a sense of frustration, characterizing the attitude of some lawmakers as “well support the unions and get out and stand on the picket lines, but we can’t support our own staff.”

MacNeill said staffers wanted to have a voice on Beacon Hill.

Twenty-seven members of the 200-seat legislature signed the House and Senate versions of legislation to allow State House staff to unionize, including Democrats and Republicans. These bills are awaiting hearing by the State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Committee.

Legislative workers aren’t the only workers asking lawmakers for collective bargaining rights this year, another round of bills would allow gig economy drivers for platforms like Uber and Lyft to unionize.

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