On Tuesday, the City Council and the Association of Legislative Employees reached a tentative agreement for the union’s first-ever contract. The contract, if ratified by the union’s more than 380 members, would make it one of the first legislative staff unions in the country.

The six-year agreement, retroactive to January 2021, conforms to the pattern established by the District Council 37 contract that covers city workers. It raises the minimum salary floor from $30,000 to $55,000 and establishes a comp time policy for staff who often work late nights at community meetings, among other benefits sought by the union.

The city’s agreement with the Association of Legislative Employees covers aides at all 51 Council member offices, as well as analysts within the Council’s finance division. The members of this independent union join the ranks of legislative staffers in Colorado, California and Oregon who have unionized in recent years. Legislative staff in Congress and the New York state legislature have also launched organizing campaigns.

“ALE members overcame enormous obstacles and achieved an industry-leading contract following almost a decade of organizing. Incredibly, we did it as a new, independent union, led and powered by volunteers,” said Daniel Kroop, ALE president and a staff member in the Council’s finance division, in a statement. “This contract asserts the dignity and value of every employee and recognizes the enormous contribution we make to this body.”

Half of the 382 Council employees covered under the contract are dues-paying members, and about a half-dozen more have so far joined the union since the tentative agreement was announced on Tuesday, according to Sarah Crean, a founding member and former city Council staffer who works for ALE part-time.

The movement among legislative workers follows the larger trend of college-educated workers forming unions, both in blue and white-collar workplaces, said Joshua Freeman, a labor historian and professor emeritus at Queens College.

“I think this is part of an even larger phenomenon, which is the attraction of college-educated young workers to unions as a way of dealing with workplace concerns,” he said on Wednesday, noting recent union victories by workers from REI to NYU. 

While most municipal workers have been unionized for decades, legislative staffers have been an anomaly, Freeman noted.

Council staff began organizing after the Council in 2016 voted to raise its own members’ pay by roughly $36,000 – about the annual salary of many overworked staffers. Several incidents of staff harassment – including claims of sexual harassment against now-expelled former Council member Andy King, and the legislative body’s initial “slap on the wrist” response – were another major impetus for organizing, Crean said. After a public campaign that formally launched in 2019, the city Office of Collective Bargaining certified the union in 2021.

Along with an immediate increase to the minimum salary floor, the union and the city Council agreed to salary increases of 3% for each of the first four years of the contract and 3.25% in the fifth year, as well as a $3,000 ratification bonus for members in active employment.

The union and the Council also reached agreements on grievance and disciplinary procedures.

The tentative agreement now heads to the union’s membership for ratification; a vote is scheduled for next week. 

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement on Tuesday that she is “proud” of the agreement. “Since the start of this bargaining process, we sought to come to a meaningful and thoughtful agreement for a first contract to support these workers within a legislative body,” she added. “This achievement honors the generations of public service provided by Council staff for decades.”

And while the union did not win every item it had proposed — such as contractual agreements on remote and hybrid work — Kroop said the union will continue fighting.

“We’re really proud and delighted to be at the end of this long phase, and not just getting recognition and now having a contract and moving into the next phase, which is enforcement and continuing to build,” on their wins, he said.