Congressional Research Employees Association

CREA would like to know if you are receiving an increased amount of comments or inquiries, by phone or email, from outside groups or the public at-large as a result of your phone numbers and email addresses being on all your CRS reports.

Before the new authoring and publishing system went live two months ago, many bargaining unit members expressed concerns about CRS management’s decision to include author email addresses and phone numbers on all written reports. Those concerns focused on the potential increase in the number of unsolicited comments and inquiries (or worse, threatening or inappropriate comments) from outside groups and the public at-large.

CREA has raised these concerns with CRS management and has been attempting to negotiate appropriate procedures should such adverse affects occur. However, CRS management has stated to CREA that it is an “unlikely event” that an employee will receive “inappropriate non-Congressional comments, or a large volume of responses or complaints regarding written products that contain his/her phone number and/or email address.”

In preparation for our talks with CRS management, CREA canvassed the bargaining unit for examples of non-Congressional comments and inquiries received before the authoring and publishing system was implemented. Several of you provided examples. Now that the authoring and publishing system has been live for two months, CREA is interested in whether you’ve noticed any change in your experience. Have you been receiving such comments or inquiries? Have they increased since implementation of the authoring and publishing system? Have any been “threatening?”

CREA is collecting examples of such communications to aid in its discussions with management. Please forward to CREA either electronically (crea@crs.loc.gov), in paper form, or via the contact link on this site. Any such communication that you feel is the result of your phone number and email address being on a report. In no case will your identity be made known. Also, feel free to comment on this issue on this site.

Thanks for your assistance.

CREA