STATE HOUSE AND SENATE staff who have spent more than three years publicly waging a fruitless battle for collective bargaining rights achieved something of a moral victory this summer, when they convinced Massachusetts Democratic Party delegates to put new support for their campaign in writing.

Thanks to an amendment adopted at the Democrats’ state convention, the official party platform explicitly supports providing legislative aides with “the compensation, support, and collective bargaining rights they deserve.” It marked the latest sign of unionization backing from a party that regularly pitches itself as pro-labor, following endorsements from most of the state’s all Democratic congressional delegation and then-gubernatorial candidate Maura Healey.

There’s just one hitch: the seemingly widespread support for legislative staff unionization makes little difference if, as continues to be the case, the two Democrats who control the Legislature aren’t on board.

Years after staff went public with their demands, the two people who call the shots in the Legislature show no interest in allowing them to organize. Meanwhile, supporters who have sway on Beacon Hill are not expending much political capital — if any — on the effort.

That leaves State House aides in a mostly powerless position, with the most obvious routes forward both blocked by legislative leaders.

Senate President Karen Spilka has declined to recognize the staff union, saying the chamber’s attorney concluded that legislative staff under statute do not receive the same collective bargaining rights afforded to most other public employees. In the House, where organizing aides have not yet achieved a majority of staff with signed union cards, Speaker Ron Mariano has not weighed in.

Some lawmakers proposed legislation that would clear up the legal concern raised by the Senate president’s team and award those rights, but House and Senate bosses who decide which bills get votes have so far kept the measures on ice.

To frustrated legislative staff members leading the union drive, the commitment of Democratic leaders to organized labor should begin at home.

“This is a test of the Legislature’s commitment to collective bargaining rights and our pro-union rhetoric,” said Ravi Simon, a House employee and one of the organizers of the unionization effort. “I would hope that legislators that consider themselves pro-union would approach this issue with real thoughtfulness and from a perspective of trying to figure out how to make collective bargaining and unionization work in the State House.”

‘Intense burnout’ common in legislative offices, staffers say

Staffers play an integral role in the function of the Legislature. Their jobs cover a wide range of titles and responsibilities, from connecting constituents with services to researching legal frameworks in other states and drafting legislation.

“We rely on them day in and day out to ensure that are we prepared, we are informed, we are on time, and to meet our obligations as elected officials,” said Rep. Rodney Elliott, a Lowell Democrat who supports staff unionization efforts. “They’re in the district, they’re in the State House. Sometimes they have to work nights. More often than not, they certainly work more than 40 hours [a week].”

Union organizers argue that jobs in the House and Senate are “not financially, emotionally, or professionally sustainable,” pointing to modest pay, uneven schedules for raises, and a lackluster career ladder.

Typical pay for legislative staff is not quite paltry, but neither is it particularly generous, especially in a state with such a notoriously high cost of living.

This year, the median annual salary rate is $65,550 for full-time House staff and $84,299 for full-time Senate staff, according to a CommonWealth Beacon analysis of state payroll data. That analysis included legislative employees who do not work for an individual lawmaker, such as House and Senate counsel and clerks.

MIT’s Living Wage calculator estimates a single adult with no children would need to earn an hourly wage of $28.88, or about $60,070 per year, to “cover the costs of their family’s basic needs” in Massachusetts. About 31 percent of full-time House staff and 6 percent of full-time Senate staff earn an annual rate less than that, payroll data show.

The “living wage” threshold increases significantly once dependents are in the mix. If two adults with two children are both working, they would each need to make at least $78,436 to cover the cost of living in Massachusetts, according to the Living Wage calculator. One adult with no children who must care for another adult would need to earn $80,600. A single parent of one child would need to earn $114,712.

Those projections cover the state as a whole, including lower-cost areas hours away from Boston. Residents who live closer to the State House need to make even more to achieve a comfortable quality of life.

Organizers say pay is one of the top issues weighing on staff.

The unionization campaign on Monday published results of a new staff survey, which found that 80 percent of respondents are dissatisfied with their salary and compensation — by far the most common pain point. It’s a marginal improvement over a similar survey conducted in late 2023 and early 2024, in which 87 percent of aides said they were unhappy over pay.

Nearly seven in 10 staff said they are worried about their current financial situation, and nearly eight in 10 said they would not be able to support dependents on their State House salary alone, according to the survey.

More than half of the aides surveyed planned to leave the Legislature within two years, a high rate of churn that organizers say deprives the House and Senate of institutional knowledge. Many aides like their jobs and enjoy working in the public sector, according to Simon, who said his colleagues want more training to hone their skills and sufficient pay to live in the area.

“When they don’t have that, I think there’s intense burnout,” he said. “People come in really excited and eager, and after a year, they’re thinking about what they need to do in order to pay rent or have reasonable work-life balance. So people start to job hunt, and I think it’s a real shame.”

“For the most part, people really enjoy their jobs and they like the work that they’re doing,” added Will Woodring, another House staffer and union organizer. “But they’re frustrated with working conditions. They’re frustrated that there’s no schedule for raises.”

Senate president still ‘does not see a path forward’

A majority of Senate employees have signed union cards signaling an interest in collective bargaining. Organizers have not yet won support from a majority of House aides, though they say the number on board is growing.

They are working with IBEW Local 2222, a union that represents thousands of workers in other industries across the region.

Legislative leaders have awarded several sizable pay raises since the unionization effort broke into public view, most recently in 2024 for the House and in August of this year for the Senate. With an eye on the complaints organizing staff made, the Senate updated its compensation structure, and the House launched new harassment prevention trainings.

As for collective bargaining, however, legislative leaders today hold exactly the same position they did when the issue first erupted more than three years ago.

Spilka in 2022 told senators and staff that “the Senate does not at this time see a path forward for a traditional employer-union relationship in the Senate as we are currently structured.” Union organizers say Senate counsel determined the state law governing public worker collective bargaining does not extend to legislative staff.

“I remain committed to making the Senate a great place to serve the people of the Commonwealth while building a career,” Spilka wrote in a memo at the time. “We will continue our efforts to improve working conditions, benefits, and salaries, and we will incorporate staff input as we have done throughout my tenure.”

A Spilka spokesperson told CommonWealth Beacon that her position today “remains consistent with the stance she took following Senate counsel’s review in 2022.”

Mariano declined to comment.

The history of public worker collective bargaining stretches back nearly a century, and the legal barrier Senate counsel has identified stems from a law first enacted in 1973.

That law as originally drafted expanded collective bargaining rights to “any person employed by a public employer” with some exceptions, such as elected and appointed officials, administrative heads of departments and offices, and National Guard members.

In 1977, lawmakers amended the law to define a public employee as “any person in the executive or judicial branch of a government unit,” with similar exceptions still in place —effectively covering workers in two of the three branches of state government, but not legislative staff.

The omission created what Spilka called a “complex legal area.”

Supporters say the solution is simple: update the law again to make explicit that legislative staff have the same collective bargaining rights as their peers in executive offices and the judiciary.

A handful of lawmakers who support the unionization effort have been pressing that idea to no avail. Last term, the Legislature’s State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Committee issued a study order for a bill seeking that change, a move lawmakers often take to kill a measure quietly without a formal vote.

Former rep. Carol Doherty and Sen. John Keenan filed similar legislation again this term. Their proposals have drawn about 20 cosponsors so far, and will go before a different panel, the Labor and Workforce Development Committee, for a hearing on October 28.

“We are a union Legislature in a union state,” Keenan said. “In the Legislature, many members seek and obtain union endorsements. We work with unions closely on a lot of different things, and we had our employees asked to form a union. Why wouldn’t we?”

Doherty died in February, and Elliott stepped in as the chief supporter behind the House version of the bill.

Pointing to raises and policy changes since the unionization campaign began, Keenan said staff “appreciate” recent improvements but still feel “frustration with things that occur that they don’t have a say in.”

“When your working conditions, when your wages, when your benefits are being discussed, where there are decisions being made relative to all those, I think it’s fair to be at the table, and I think they’re frustrated that they are not,” he said.

Some lawmakers have suggested the calculus is not so easy.

Sen. Will Brownsberger, a member of Spilka’s leadership team, said in 2022 that “a traditional union model does not make sense in the context of the legislative structure in Massachusetts,” where all 40 senators (and all 160 representatives) hire and manage their own aides.

“In this Legislature, we have Senate offices where Senate staff work for individual senators and they work in small teams,” Brownsberger told the State House News Service after Spilka first detailed her doubts.

Even if the Labor Committee favorably advances the bill, several larger hurdles would still loom. Legislative leaders could once again keep the measure in limbo until it dies at the end of the two-year term.

Now in support: the Massachusetts Democratic Party

The latest boost to the effort came last month, when Massachusetts Democrats gathered for their annual convention.

While working to put forward language supporting State House staff collective bargaining rights, Simon, who co-chairs the Sudbury Democratic Town Committee, said organizers “heard a lot of shock from people that we didn’t already have collective bargaining rights.”

No one voiced concerns about the measure during convention debate. The amendment was adopted on a voice vote.

“It’s a significant political victory. I also think it’s a major moral victory for the party that dominates politics in Massachusetts to say that this is something that is important enough to it to include in the platform,” Simon said. “This issue tests our commitment to collective bargaining rights and whether we are really comfortable saying that all workers deserve those rights.”

While organizers feel buoyed, the convention’s support might not move the needle.

Party conventions have long been dominated by progressive activists whose policy stands are regarded as little more than suggestions on Beacon Hill, where actual power is wielded and decisions are made.

The Massachusetts Democratic Party platform is littered with proposals that have a cloudy future on Beacon Hill. Some are so broad that they would not fit into a single bill, and several others endorse more specific changes that have little to no support among legislative leaders, such as “an end to the state’s punitive use of high-stakes testing” and “a fair and effective economy-wide price on carbon pollution.”

That points at a broader dynamic: few figures with political power have expended significant capital backing the staff unionization effort.

As a candidate for governor, Healey signaled her support. A campaign spokesperson told The Boston Globe in 2022 that “Maura continues to support the right of workers, including Senate staff, to organize and collectively bargain.”

But Healey has said little about the topic in the three and a half years since then.

Asked about the governor’s current view on the legislative staff unionization effort, a Healey spokesperson declined to comment.

The Massachusetts AFL-CIO supports the staffers who are trying to unionize, and the organization endorsed the Doherty-Keenan bill among dozens of others this cycle.

“We stand with the rights of every worker to organize a union, whether we’re talking about baristas, State House staff, doctors and custodians, [or] construction workers,” said Mass. AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer Kevin Brousseau. “As we look around, we see organizing in every type of workplace right now, because folks really want to make sure they’re having that voice on the job.”

But the AFL-CIO’s support for legislative aides so far has not extended to direct criticism of the top Democrats who continue to block the effort.

Brousseau pivoted away from a direct answer when asked if he’s frustrated with the stance Mariano and Spilka have taken toward staff unionization. “I think that workers just want to have a chance,” he replied. “There’s an interest across the board with working people to join a union and have that opportunity, so I think folks really just want to get to the table and have that discussion.”

The Labor Committee hearing on the latest version of the bill Tuesday could shed more light on the scope of support among legislators and activists.

Legislative staff in several other jurisdictions have made significant progress on their own collective bargaining efforts in the years since the Massachusetts campaign launched publicly.

Aides in the Oregon state Legislature similarly joined IBEW, and went on to win a contract in 2023, more than two years after they first voted to unionize. In Washington State, Republican and Democratic staffers ratified separate contracts over the past year after winning the right to organize in 2022. Hundreds of aides who work for the 51-member New York City Council agreed to their first union contract last year.

And in Washington, DC, Ed Markey became the first senator to voluntarily recognize his aides’ collective bargaining unit, then agreed to “ground rules” for contract negotiations.

“This has absolutely happened before. It can happen here in Massachusetts,” Woodring said. “We’re not trying to do something new here.”

This story has been updated to include results of a new State House staff survey published Monday morning.