On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that congressional staffers who choose to unionize will have her “full support.”
- “Like all Americans, our tireless Congressional staff have the right to organize their workplace and join together in a union. If and when staffers choose to exercise that right, they would have Speaker Pelosi’s full support,” Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, tweeted, per The Hill.
The discourse began when in a press conference, Pelosi was asked if she supports the unionization efforts and what she thought of the Instagram account called “Dear White Staffers,” which speaks up about low pay and lack of diversity on Capitol Hill.
- According to Business Insider, the account started in 2010, solicits and publishes experiences of Capitol Hill staffers, which means that the content is mostly unfiltered and unvetted, leaving it up to the readers to decide what’s true.
- Even though the account leans left, it has reserved most of its anger towards Democrats for not living up to their pro-union and pro-diversity standards.
- “Capitol Hill is staffed by the kid in the front row that has their hand up. They want to serve,” said one former House staffer, who has submitted a personal story to the Instagram account, per Politico. “And then they get ground up and spit out.”
- “When I started, it was just an open secret that things were bad, but you just put your head down,” the former House staffer said. “And I think there’s something happening right now with Dear White Staffers — that it’s just generations of staffers who have trauma-bonded, and it’s all coming to light through this Instagram account. And it’s so cathartic, and it’s so bleak. And that open secret is just being obliterated.”