The Senate chamber at the Oregon State Capitol building
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
With Oregon’s 2025 legislative session set to kick off later this month, all is not well in Capitol labor relations.
A union representing legislative aides -- the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 89 -- has yet to hammer out a new contract after the previous agreement lapsed on Dec. 31. Without that agreement, roughly 150 aides who provide crucial services that make the Legislature run will not get a cost-of-living pay increase other legislative employees received Jan. 1.
The union is pushing what it says are necessary improvements to make aides’ work life tenable: better parking and money that would allow every lawmaker to employ two staffers year-round.
In recent weeks, rumors have circulated that staffers could strike if legislative leaders don’t meet those demands – a move that would have big ramifications for the six-month session that officially begins Jan. 21.
But IBEW Local 89 said Monday a strike was a remote possibility.
“Strike is an avenue that unions take,” said Justin Roberts, an IBEW organizer working with the legislative union. “We are so, so far from that.”
Instead, legislative staffers are considering a number of less-drastic steps. A survey sent to aides by the union’s bargaining team last week included possible strategies like pressuring lawmakers to stand up for their staff members, sending out a press release, and organizing a picket at the Capitol to raise awareness for the union’s demands.
“There are several tactics the union can employ in the near-term to apply pressure and increase the likelihood of wins at the bargaining table,” the survey read.
The document goes on to lay out the primary demands the union is making.
Staff say they want parking spots that are closer to the Capitol and at least partly paid for by the Legislature. Lawmakers have paid parking in a garage beneath the Capitol and some parking places around the building are reserved for high-level staff, but much of the nearest street parking is metered.
“The two components of this are safety (minimize the distance between car and Capitol, more secure paths to and from the Capitol, etc.) and cost (some form of stipend or other funding/reimbursement),” the survey said.
Aides currently have the option of paying to park in state-run lots across the Capitol Mall from their offices, reserving parking at a closer privately run lot, or paying parking meters, which can cost $15 a day.
Staffers are also looking to increase their permanent ranks. Currently, lawmakers in the state’s part-time Legislature typically keep a chief-of-staff employed year-round, and bring in an additional staffer when they meet in session. Some also take on interns to bolster their office during busy session months.
The union wants the Legislature to begin paying for two year-round staffers per lawmaker – one chief of staff, and another lower-paid aide.
“We want some level of commitment documented by management that they will work to try and make this happen,” the survey said.
Aides aren’t alone in seeking the change. Last month, a bipartisan group of more than 30 lawmakers signed onto a letter urging legislative leaders to bolster their staff budget.
The letter, coordinated by state Rep. Courtney Neron, D-Wilsonville, said demands on legislators “have grown significantly” in recent years, especially as the political climate grows more polarized.
Without enough staff to handle tasks while the Legislature is not in session, aides increasingly burn out, the letter said. Lawmakers who signed onto the document told OPB the current funding structure has made it hard to attract and retain qualified staffers.
“There are not many jobs that let you take a break for six months every other year,” said state Rep. Khanh Pham, D-Portland, who will be sworn in as a state senator next week. “People have to quit their job if they’re working, come work for us for six months, and then have to look for another job. That kind of instability is really hard to recruit for.”
State Sen. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford, said the Legislature’s staffing policies are outdated.
“There is so much constituent work, especially considering the laws that we continue to pass, which then create more regulatory burdens, which then create more emails and phone calls,” Smith said. “The part-time Legislature isn’t that anymore. It is a full-time job for those that want to make it a full-time job.”
Smith and Pham said they had not heard back from legislative leadership about the request, but any action is unlikely to be immediate. Rather, increased money for staffing would be included in the two-year budget lawmakers must pass by July.
Legislative staffers first voted to unionize in 2021, defeating legal arguments from the Legislature that a union was “fundamentally incompatible” with the work lawmakers do. The vote made Oregon’s aides the first employees of their kind in the nation to organize, but an initial contract took nearly 20 months to negotiate, and only lasted a year.
The union and legislative leadership have been bargaining over a new agreement since September, with their last sit-down meeting on Dec. 17, according to Roberts, the IBEW organizer.
The atypical nature of the Legislature, where aides are employed individually by a disparate – and sometimes combative – group of elected officials, and routinely serve for just months at a time, makes organizing tricky. Roberts estimated only about a quarter of aides currently represented by the union are actually dues-paying members.
The current lack of a contract creates potential financial consequences for staffers. As of Jan. 1, all other legislative employees got their pay hiked by 6.6% to account for inflation. Aides represented by the union did not.
The state’s two top lawmakers, House Speaker Julie Fahey, D-Eugene, and Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, are ultimately responsible for reaching a deal with the union. Neither would comment on the situation Monday.
But Roberts said the union would seek a retroactive cost-of-living bump for aides once a contract is reached. When that will happen, and what union members might try to force the Legislature’s hand, is unclear.
“Bargaining doesn’t go well until it does,” Roberts said. “We’re still negotiating.”