In summary
Legislative leaders declared support for a bill to let staffers finally form a union, but the newly amended bill wouldn’t allow one until 2026.
They have waited decades for the right to form a union. But it looks like California’s legislative staffers will have to wait at least two more years.
After a unionization bill failed on the last day of the session last year, legislative leaders declared support for the effort this year, even designating the measure as Assembly Bill 1. But this week, that bill was changed to not take effect until 2026.
Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, the bill’s author, agreed to the amendments after recommendations from the Senate labor committee last week.
One legislative employee who supports the effort said staff members wish the implementation date was sooner, but remain optimistic about the bill. Organizers behind the union effort declined to comment on the amendments.
McKinnor said Thursday that she and Sen. Dave Cortese, chairperson of the Senate’s labor committee and a co-author on the bill, did a “deep dive into what it would take to make this work,” and decided to delay its implementation date.
“I just think that we have to get this right, and it’s going to take time for staff to choose a union to represent them, and that part really takes a lot of time,” said McKinnor, a Democrat from Inglewood.
The bill’s eventual passage seems more likely than ever, with a list of 42 co-authors that includes new Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, and with McKinnor’s leadership role on the Assembly’s labor and employment committee, where the effort has died four out of the five times it has been proposed. The Assembly passed the bill on a 68-5 vote on May 25.
“I think the political will is here now…. We have people who’ve come in and they genuinely care about this staff,” McKinnor, who is serving her first full-term and is a former legislative staff member herself, told CalMatters in April.
The proposed delay in its implementation, however, doesn’t help one of the key arguments for the bill: Better working conditions may improve recruitment and retention of staff, an ongoing struggle for the Legislature.
McKinnor said she didn’t think the delayed implementation would add to that. She said the bill’s passage would encourage people who want to work at the Capitol because it will show “that the Legislature is moving towards a more equitable workplace,” she said.
There are about 1,800 full-time staffers employed by the Legislature.
Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story
Tina McKinnor
State Assembly, District 61 (Inglewood)
State Assembly, District 61 (Inglewood)
Dave Cortese
State Senate, District 15 (Campbell)
State Senate, District 15 (Campbell)
Time in office
2020—present
Background
County Supervisor, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors
Contact
Other amendments now in the bill make clear which legislative operations are excluded from the bargaining table because they’re governed by the state constitution or state laws. They include:
- Qualifications and elections of members;
- How each house chooses officers, adopts rules and selects committees;
- How the Legislature considers and enacts legislation;
- Matters relating to legislative calendars, schedules, and deadlines;
- Laws and policies regarding ethics or conflicts of interest.
At a June 28 Senate labor committee meeting, Cortese, a Democrat from San Jose, said the committee’s concerns — some of which are reflected in the amendments — “are really to ensure the legal — not only survivability but the legal appropriateness of every detail in the bill so that we don’t get into a situation where after all this work there’s some sort of, the kind of a challenge or glitch that bars, or at least, delays implementation.”
Cortese said he expected further concerns — such as provisions in case the union goes on strike — would be addressed in the Senate judiciary committee, which approved the bill on Tuesday.
The bill is at least the sixth effort since 2000 to allow legislative staff to unionize. Critics have pointed to the lack of collective bargaining as one of the most egregious examples of the Legislature playing by different rules, since it has expanded labor rights for many other workers in California.
“In any workplace, an imbalance of power leaves workers with little to no recourse to make their voice heard,” says an argument in support of the bill from the California Labor Federation and multiple unions. “In recent years, various events, including the #MeToo Movement and the COVID-19 pandemic, have shed a spotlight on legislative employees’ fear of retribution for voicing workplace concerns and their lack of tangible workplace protections in statute due to their at-will status.”
But the Senate labor committee staff’s analysis — reflected in the amended version of the bill — points to constitutional and practical issues and asserts that the Legislature needs to operate under its own rules.
“Whatever others may say about all employers’ reluctance or outright hostility to employee organizing or how self-important it may sound, the Legislature is a beast of a different nature,” the analysis says.
more on the legislature
Rules for thee: How California Legislature skirts its own laws
State legislators sometimes exempt themselves from the laws they pass, but this session, they could change course on an emblematic bill: To allow their own staffers to form a union.
