Published
March 24, 2025
As this blog has reported, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has released a framework for labor law reform that incorporates provisions of the anti-employer Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the mis-named Warehouse Worker Protection Act. The business community has raised many concerns about the harm this framework would cause to both employers and workers.
The first bill introduced under the framework, the Faster Labor Contracts Act (S. 844), is actually lifted word for word from the binding first contract provisions of the PRO Act. It would empower the federal government to dictate the terms of private sector labor contracts, a step no Republican has supported previously.
Aside from promoting bigger government, the bill faces one other major problem as a result of an Executive Order signed by President Trump on March 14. The order, titled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” calls for a number of agencies, one of which is the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), to “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”
In other words, the FMCS will effectively cease most of its operations. Yet Hawley’s legislation relies on the FMCS to play a key role in promoting faster labor contracts. Under his bill, an employer would have 10 days to begin contract negotiations with a newly formed union. Then the two sides would have 90 days to reach an agreement. If they didn’t, either side could call in the FMCS to broker a deal. After that, a government-imposed arbitration panel would dictate the terms of the contract.
While this abbreviated negotiation period is already unworkable, with the FMCS essentially defunct it becomes nonsensical. The agency would need to add staff to fulfill its responsibilities under Hawley’s bill. With the President’s order, it is obviously headed in a different direction.
Conservatives have typically not been fans of legislation that requires bigger government and that gives it more control over the private sector. It is probably time for the Faster Labor Contracts Act to make a fast exit from the legislative agenda.
About the authors
Glenn Spencer
Spencer oversees the Chamber’s work on immigration, retirement security, traditional labor relations, human trafficking, wage hour and worker safety issues, EEOC matters, and state labor and employment law.
