Voting to Reject Trump’s Attacks on Federal Unions
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This is certainly an interesting development:
A bipartisan bill that would end the Trump administration’s rollback of collective bargaining rights for most federal employees is guaranteed to get a full House vote, now that a majority of lawmakers support it.
As of Monday, 218 House lawmakers signed onto a discharge petition, forcing the House to vote on the Protect America’s Workforce Act.
The bill, led by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) would restore collective bargaining rights for tens of thousands of federal employees, if approved by Congress.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March that barred unions from bargaining on behalf of federal employees at many agencies, on the grounds that those agencies work primarily in national security. In August, he signed another executive order that expanded the list of agencies barred from negotiations with federal employee unions.
Lawmakers estimate the executive order impacts about 67% of the federal workforce. The Trump administration’s policy has barred unions from representing employees at the departments of Defense, State, Veterans Affairs, Justice and Energy.
A group of six unions led by the American Federation of Government Employees sued the Trump administration over its rollback of collective bargaining rights, arguing that the administration has taken an overly broad view of agencies that work primarily in national security.
A federal judge blocked the administration from enforcing the executive order in April, but an appeals court stayed that decision this summer and allowed agencies to keep canceling collective bargaining agreements that cover broad swaths of the federal workforce. Since the appeals court’s ruling, several agencies have rescinded their collective bargaining rights with unions.
Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Nick Lalota (R-N.Y.) contributed the last two signatures for the discharge petition on Monday. Lawler said in a statement that “restoring collective bargaining rights strengthens our federal workforce and helps deliver more effective, accountable service to the American people.”
Hard to see the Senate picking it up. Given that point, I imagine we might even see Josh Hawley pretend to care about this since it won’t mean anything for him to say it. But even a House vote on this suggests some residual pro-basic worker rights among a few Republicans that surprise me in this day and age.