Legal Faq - Fact Sheet
WHAT IS THE CONGRESSIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY ACT (CAA)?
The CAA is a law passed and signed into law in 1995 that extended twelve workplace laws to Congress, including the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The CAA also opened the door for extending the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), which guarantees most federal government employees a right to organize unions and bargain collectively. The FSLMRS currently protects most executive branch employees, and even legislative branch employees of the Library of Congress and the Government Accountability Office.
Note* The vast majority of federal workers are regulated under the FSLMRS, NOT the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
DOES THE CAA CURRENTLY PROTECT STAFF UNION ORGANIZING?
The CAA started a process to close this loophole by extending labor law to Congressional staff—including allowing staff to vote in union representation elections, protecting collective bargaining, and protecting staff from retaliation for organizing activities; however, Congress never completed the process.
The CAA directed the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights (OCWR) to promulgate two regulations to formally implement Congressional staff’s right to organize: one regulation for non-policy staff (such as those of the Architect of the Capitol and the Office of the Attending Physician), and one for policy staff.
While Congress quickly approved the OCWR regulation granting non-policy staff the right to organize, unfortunately, Congress never approved the OCWR regulation for policy staff of the legislative branch.
According to the CAA, the House and the Senate can each approve the regulation with respect to their own employees, but neither has done so in the 25 years since OCWR issued the regulation.
ARE CONGRESSIONAL STAFFERS PROHIBITED FROM ORGANIZING UNTIL CONGRESS APPROVES THE REGULATION UNDER THE CAA?
No. Nothing stops you from organizing.
The crucial distinction is that Congressional staff are not prohibited from organizing, they just lack legal protections when they do so. This means that, if a majority of staff in an office organize a union, nothing prohibits a Member from recognizing that union and bargaining with staff.
This also means that Congressional staff must be especially careful. If a Member retaliates against a staffer for organizing, that staffer has no legal recourse because Congress has not approved the OCWR regulation. If a Member refuses to recognize a union, the staff do not have a legal process to force recognition and begin bargaining. But again, nothing prevents staff from organizing and Members from recognizing. We believe our power comes from the work we do in Congress, and that the strength of this institution will improve if we organize.
If either the House or the Senate approved the OCWR regulation, it would provide legal protection to House or Senate staff who engage in organizing activity—meaning that such staff can seek legal recourse if they face retaliation for organizing. It would also provide a system for conducting union representation elections, and require Members to respect the results of those elections and to bargain with the union. We will do everything we can to gain this legal protection, but after 25 years of waiting it is now up to us to bring about change from the bottom up.
DOES ORGANIZING A UNION CREATE A CONFLICT OF INTEREST?
No. When OCWR developed its regulation extending the right to organize to Congressional staff, the CAA specifically directed OCWR to address whether to exclude any staff from the right to organize due to a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest. OCWR concluded: “collective organization of [Congressional] office employees would not create a real or apparent conflict of interest—just as it does not for appointed and career employees in the Executive Branch who perform comparable policy or legislative-related functions.”
In reaching this conclusion, OCWR noted that it “fails to see how working with labor organizations concerning their legislative interests confers or appears to confer any improper private economic benefit on legislative branch employees—just as [it] does not see how working on legislative matters with other interest groups to which the employee might belong (such as the American Tax Reduction Movement [or] the Sierra Club…) would do so.”
Additionally, it is worth noting that the FSLMRS has explicitly covered legislative branch employees at the Library of Congress since the law’s enactment in 1979, and those at the Government Accountability Office since 1982. Staff at both agencies have organized unions without risking any conflict of interest.