'Of course we're gonna unionize. That's who we are.'
by employees in Rep. Omar’s office and Rep. Khanna's office, a majority of whom also voted to form unions. On Omar's team, the vote was unanimous: 12-0.
“As a former union member myself and someone who represents a union district in Minnesota, I am deeply proud of my staff for making their collective voices heard and voting to unionize," Omar told“Unions are the bedrock of the middle class. The labor movement helped get us the 40 hour work week, the weekend, and child labor laws. Every single worker deserves a union to represent them and fight for their wages, benefits, and basic workplace protections.
Minneapolis is a [union] town, so a lot of it kind of just made sense. Of course we're gonna unionize. That's who we are. But we also wanted to help pave the way for other offices who may not be in the position that we're in with a very friendly and worker-centric boss [or] receptive management. We wanted to make sure that we can beef up the numbers of the first wave of offices.
on Instagram, for example, were highlighting different staffer horror stories, bad bosses, and just the culture on the Hill [in order] to have these conversations with other staffers, to hear about their experience and what we can do to make it better for all staffers across the board. My dad used to work on Capitol Hill in the '80s, and I would hear these horror stories from back then, and how women were treated and people of color were treated. To see we still have so many of the same issues that we did decades ago — we have a lot of work to do and we all wanted to be part of helping with that.I think the beginning of the pandemic really highlighted and kind of underscored all the existing issues that we had experienced, but almost made them worse.