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The House has voted on a bipartisan basis to restore labor rights to 1 million federal workers after President Donald Trump yanked them away in an executive order earlier this year, in a rare show of defiance against the president by over a dozen GOP members.
In a 231 to 195 vote on Thursday afternoon, the House passed the Protect America’s Workforce Act, which would nullify Trump’s orders in March and August to exempt workers at dozens of agencies from collective bargaining rights.
The bill passed with 20 Republicans joining all Democrats in voting “yes.” The bill simply nullifies the order and says that collective bargaining agreements — known otherwise as union contracts — in effect before the order will be restored.
The legislation was forced onto the floor after a discharge petition surpassed the requisite 218 signatures in November. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it may face more difficult odds of passing the chamber’s 60-vote threshold. A companion bill introduced in the Senate has 48 cosponsors, only one of them Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
Trump’s orders have been slammed by labor advocates as the largest single act of union busting in U.S. history. They were especially disastrous for the labor movement since public sector workers are unionized at a far higher rate than those in the private sector.
The affected unions had sued the Trump administration following the March order, but a federal appeals court had allowed it to stand, paving the way for Trump to issue his follow-up order in August to strip yet more workers of union rights.
Advocates had already decried restrictions on federal workers’ labor rights that were in place before Trump’s orders; those restrictions limit workers to bargaining solely on labor conditions, and not factors like wages or benefits.
Labor advocates celebrated the House vote.
“President Trump betrayed workers when he tried to rip away our collective bargaining rights. In these increasingly polarized times, working people delivered a rare bipartisan majority to stop the administration’s unprecedented attacks on our freedoms,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler in a statement.
“Americans trust unions more than either political party. As we turn to the Senate — where the bill already has bipartisan support — working people are calling on the politicians we elected to stand with us, even if it means standing up to the union-busting boss in the White House,” Shuler said.
Indeed, approval of labor unions has reached highs, hovering around 70 percent in recent years as the labor movement and unionization surged.
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