Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., asked at a House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearing how OCWR had supported last year’s resolution guaranteeing protections for staff unionizing, Findlay made no mention of this year’s rules package or any suggestion that his office had stopped overseeing staff union elections.
Testimony by OCWR Executive Director Patrick Findlay on Wednesday would seem to support that interpretation. “But … in order to do it, they have to do it in a clear and unequivocal way. “It’s entirely within the power of the House to write specific rules that change or even eliminate rights that staffers have,” Mulshine said. While that might seem to nullify aides’ ability to form new unions, the language is actually ineffective, said Kevin Mulshine, author of the Demand Progress Education Fund report and a former senior adviser and counsel at OCWR.
Republicans opposed the measure at the time, and after taking control of the House, they adopted a rule that said the “regulations adopted pursuant to shall have no force or effect” during the current Congress. The House began allowing members’ staff to form unions last year by adopting a resolution that authorized regulations from the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights. A report from a congressional watchdog argues that Republicans’ attempt to nix staffer unions in the House rules package isn’t valid, and recent testimony from the agency that oversees Hill worker protections seems to confirm that analysis.
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