This resolution gives Senate employees the right to form unions and negotiate collectively with their employer, just like workers in many private companies can do. Before this, Senate workers didn't have these protections. The resolution officially approves rules that were created back in 1996 by the Office of Compliance (now called the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights) to make these labor rights apply specifically to Senate staff. Essentially, it means Senate employees can band together to discuss wages, benefits, working conditions, and other job-related issues with Senate leadership, rather than having these things decided unilaterally by management. This brings Senate workers under the same labor protections that Congress had already extended to other congressional employees through the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995.

A resolution to provide for the approval of final regulations relating to Federal service labor-management relations that are applicable to the Senate and the employees of the Senate, and that were issued by the Office of Compliance, now known as the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, on August 19, 1996, and for other purposes.

Brown, Sherrod

<p>This resolution extends collective bargaining rights prescribed in the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 to employees of the Senate.</p>