Having secured seven Republican signatures on their discharge petition, Democratic lawmakers just secured an imminent vote on the Faster Labor Contracts Act — a union leaders’ pipedream that was considered too radical to pass Congress even under the Obama-era Democratic supermajority.
This legislation would allow unelected, uninformed federal bureaucrats to set the terms of union contracts if the parties can’t reach an agreement within 90 days of negotiations and 30 days of mediation. The result could be lost jobs, failed businesses, and a dictatorial union contract process.
Recommended Stories
For all labor unions’ posturing about democracy in the workplace, they’re lobbying hard for a bill that would give individual workers even less of a voice.
US DENOUNCES ATTEMPTED ‘COUP’ IN BOLIVIA AFTER LEFT-WING STRIKERS PARALYZE COUNTRY
Nearly all union constitutions and bylaws require a majority of union members to vote in favor of a collective bargaining agreement before it’s ratified. But under the Faster Labor Contracts Act, any negotiations that result in forced arbitration would leave workers without a vote on their binding employment terms.
This would come on top of unions already preventing individual workers from dealing directly with employers on their own terms because, even if workers don’t want union representation, the union has a monopoly on worker representation.
Since the Faster Labor Contracts Act would enable forced arbitration after just 120 days of negotiations and fewer than 10% of first contracts are achieved within 120 days, according to a Bloomberg Law Analysis, that could leave a majority of workers without a vote on their new terms of employment.
The result in both cases — rushed contracts seeking to avoid arbitration or contracts determined by federal arbitrators who lack knowledge and experience about the workplace and industry they will determine binding contract terms over — will be inferior contracts that risk costing workers’ jobs and ruining entire businesses.
While it’s understandable that workers who have been overpromised by union organizers expect big changes and fast results, the 120-day limit to reaching a first contract is arbitrary and rushed. Consider the newly unionized workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who just voted in February 2026 to ratify their first contract 22 months after voting to approve union representation.
That contract is 249 pages long and contains 19 separate articles and 7 memoranda of understanding. Without sufficient time to consider the many facets of the business and workers’ rights and compensation, a rushed contract decided by a federal arbitrator after 120 days of negotiations would not possibly have been as comprehensive and could have jeopardized Volkswagen’s success, along with VW workers’ compensation and jobs.
In healthcare, the workplace is particularly complex, and the stakes are incredibly high. Not surprisingly, first contracts take especially long in healthcare settings. Do we really want federal bureaucrats dictating the terms of employment and workplace operations when lives are on the line?
While forced arbitration for union contracts would be new in the private sector, there is a corollary in the public sector called “interest arbitration” that some states most frequently apply to police and firefighter labor disputes. It’s not entirely analogous because a government that imposes forced arbitration is also the employer and thus part of the contract negotiations. Moreover, governments aren’t subject to the same bottom line as private sector companies because, unlike businesses, states generally can’t go bankrupt.
Nevertheless, interest arbitration contracts have burdened state and local governments, arguably contributing to rising property tax rates in New Jersey, unfunded pensions in Chicago, and even municipal bankruptcy in Detroit.
In addition to inferior outcomes, it’s not clear that the Faster Labor Contracts Act is even lawful.
Since mutual assent is a requirement of legally enforceable contracts and the Act could result in labor terms being imposed on parties without one or both or their assent, the Faster Labor Contracts Act would almost certainly face serious constitutional challenges.
REMADE IN THE USA: TRUMP’S LABOR BUREAUCRACY GETS A RESHUFFLE
Replacing private collaboration with government coercion might produce faster labor contracts, but conservatives should remember that every expansion of government power ultimately comes at the cost of personal freedom, market distortions, and unintended consequences. Imposing binding terms on private employers and workers without either of them approving of the terms governing livelihoods is centralized control masquerading as “worker empowerment.”
Conservatives who value the freedom to contract, free enterprise, and a thriving marketplace should reject the temptation to side with union leaders’ political priorities over the workers and businesses that would ultimately bear the consequences.
Rachel Greszler is a senior research fellow at the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at Advancing American Freedom Foundation.
