Josh Hawley's Pro-Union Bill Would Let Washington Write Your Contract
· Reason
In recent years, observers have closely tracked the rise of pro-union sentiments on the political right. During his reelection campaign, President Donald Trump garnered headlines for skipping a presidential debate to visit United Auto Workers (UAW), who were on strike in Michigan, while officials like Vice President JD Vance and Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) have made waves for their pro-union bent. Perhaps most prominently, Teamsters President Sean O'Brien was featured as a speaker at the GOP convention.
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But to this point, any actual legislation emanating from the pro-labor right has failed to go anywhere in Congress. That may soon change.
A Hawley-backed bill, known as the Faster Labor Contracts Act (FLCA), seems to be picking up steam and may soon pass the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, the FLCA is a trifecta of bad public policy: It suffers from constitutional infirmities, revives a corrupt government agency, and takes away the voice of both businesses and workers.
Earlier this Congress, Hawley introduced the FLCA in the Senate, alongside one other Republican senator and three Democratic senators; he has since picked up another Republican and 10 more Democrats. Companion legislation in the House has 99 cosponsors, 17 of which are Republican.
The FLCA is designed to expedite the process of labor negotiations once a union is recognized in a workplace. Unions often claim that businesses purposely drag their feet in such negotiations, and the bill would seek to remedy this by requiring contract negotiations to commence within 10 days of a collective bargaining request from a newly-recognized union. The parties would then have 90 days to negotiate—followed by 30 days of mediation—before the issue would be punted to government-mandated arbitration.
The arbitration would be overseen by a three-member arbitration panel. Each side of the labor equation would get to appoint one of their preferred arbitrators, but if they were unable to agree on a third, then an agency called the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service would step in to make the appointment.
This government-mandated arbitration panel would then have the power to impose contract terms on the business and union involved. In other words, the give-and-take of labor contract negotiations would be taken out of the hands of private entities such as businesses and unions and placed into the hands of a government-mandated panel.
So far, in both chambers of Congress, the FLCA has been stuck in committee. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) has refused to bring the legislation to the floor. But last month, a discharge petition was filed, which could soon force the bill onto the floor if a majority of representatives go along. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D–N.Y.) has gone on record to say that the petition will "soon" get the requisite votes needed, and pro-union Republicans in the House are even bolder in their confidence.
"We're just developing the strategy, but it's a question of when, not if," said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R–Pa.), a cosponsor of the bill, in remarks to a gathering of Pennsylvania Teamsters. "It will be brought to the floor and it will pass. That is a guarantee."
Although the FLCA will face a tougher road in the Senate, it has more Republican support than would have seemed plausible in the recent past. Pending the results of the 2026 midterms, it could soon get within a stone's throw of being sent to President Donald Trump's desk.
Both businesses and workers should fear such a development. First, on the policy merits, it's a terrible idea to take labor contract negotiations—which have always been a voluntary back and forth between two private parties—and put them into the hands of the government. Labor negotiations can take a long time for a reason, as the issues are highly complex and specific to the unique industries involved.
A Bloomberg Law analysis found that negotiations for initial union contracts in workplaces take an average of 409 days to reach completion. Condensing this to an unrealistic 120 days under the FLCA would likely mean circumventing negotiation altogether and dictating terms.
Another troubling feature of the FLCA is that it would resuscitate a bloated federal agency that became a prime example of government excess. The aforementioned Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which is tasked with overseeing the mandatory arbitration process under the FLCA, has been notorious for corruption and largesse.
The agency's nine-floor office in Washington, D.C. reportedly featured special private bathrooms for staff, a full gym, and oil paintings of staff members. One of the officials at the agency found a way to list his permanent residence in Iowa so that he could treat time in D.C. as a business trip and bill food costs to the U.S. government.
Unsurprisingly, the agency became a target of the Department of Government Efficiency, which reduced the agency's staff by 93 percent and cut its mediation workforce from around 100 employees to just five. But while the Trump administration has sought to permanently wind down the agency, the FLCA would suddenly give it enhanced powers to write labor contract terms in the private sector.
Perhaps most concerning of all, the FLCA suffers from deep constitutional defects. Because the FLCA functionally empowers the government to dictate contract terms to private parties, this creates a form of "state action." And once state action is implicated, constitutional rights like the freedom of speech and association suddenly can be invoked.
In the 2018 case Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court held that forcing government employees to join a union without a way to opt out was a violation of those workers' free speech and association rights. Janus has not applied to private sector unions, however, since there's no state action involved. But under the FLCA, with its government-mandated arbitration, the calculus could change due to the suddenly-present state action, thereby allowing First Amendment challenges to go forward.
It's clear that the political right increasingly wants to be identified as pro-worker. And there are legitimate and worthwhile policy options available to accomplish this goal. But the Faster Labor Contracts Act isn't one of them.
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