House to raise staff pay, vote to allow unionizing
The House will increase the annual minimum pay for congressional staff members to $45,000 a year and vote on permitting its workers to unionize, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Friday.
“This is also an issue of fairness, as many of the youngest staffers working the longest hours often earn the lowest salaries,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to House members. An order for the minimum pay change will go into effect Sept. 1 and members are to vote on a bill allowing unionization next week.
The moves come after the emergence of a nascent Congressional Workers Union, which aimed to correct what it called a long history of harassment, discrimination, and poor pay. Legislative employees, encumbered with stagnant salaries as low as $29,000 a year, have pushed for collective bargaining power on diversity, covid-19 safety and protection from sexual harassment.
The median annual salary for House staff was $59,000 in 2021, according to a survey from the House Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
Lower ranking positions, such as staff assistants and legislative correspondents, were lucky to clear $40,000 a year. Less than 40% of staffers who participated in the survey felt they were paid commensurate with their position.
The number of House staff overall was 9,034 in 2021, according to a report by congressional researchers. Those working in member offices totaled 6,329, and others work for committees, commissions, or party leadership offices.
A living wage in Washington, D.C., is about $43,000 a year for a single adult and $82,000 a year for a single parent, according to a costof-living database from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The maximum annual rate for House staffers, was raised in August to $199,300, and will now increase to $203,700 to match a Senate increase, Pelosi said.
Congress passed a law in 1995 extending workplace protections to its own staff, but never ratified proposed regulations that would grant legislative staffers unionization rights.
The bill to be voted on next week will extend collective bargaining rights to House staffers was introduced earlier this year by Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich., and a group of colleagues. It could be enacted without Senate action.
Pelosi notes in her letter that government funding legislation enacted in March included a 21% increase in the “Members’ Representational Allowance” for their office budgets, which she said would more than cover the pay adjustment.
“We applaud Speaker Pelosi’s establishment of a baseline of $45,000 for House staff pay, which addresses a serious issue where one-in-eight staffers earned below a living wage,” Daniel Schuman, policy director for the Demand Progress & Demand Progress Education Fund, which advocated for the changes on behalf of staffers.
He said the increased pay will remediate a longstanding situation where some staff have been paid poverty wages. The workers union told staffers in a statement Friday that the floor vote next week to allow the to unionize will put lawmakers to a test.
“Next week, every Member of Congress who’s stood up for workers rights must vote to pass the resolution to give their own workers the right to unionize and bargain collectively, free from retaliation. If Democrats are For the People, we are people too,” the union’s statement read.