It’s a rare thing: a pro-worker labor law reform bill that has bipartisan support in Congress.
The bill — the Advance Faster Labor Contracts Act — would require an employer to start negotiating a collective bargaining agreement no later than 10 days after the National Labor Relations Board certifies that a union has majority support. If the two sides still haven’t reached agreement after 90 days of bargaining, they enter mediation. And if there’s still no agreement 30 days after that, either side could appeal to a three-person arbitration panel that would issue a binding ruling setting the terms for a first union contract.
The bill is a response to a very common abuse of labor law. The National Labor Relations Act says an employer must bargain in good faith to try to achieve a collective bargaining agreement, but many or even most employers will go through the motions and drag out bargaining indefinitely, not really intending to reach agreement. According to the Bloomberg news organization, it takes a newly unionized unit of workers 465 days on average to get a first contract with an employer, and that only counts units that end up getting a contract at all.
If the Advance Faster Labor Contracts Act passes, it would be the first amendment to the National Labor Relations Act in over 50 years. Unlike other pro-worker labor law reform proposals, it has some Republican support. The Senate version, S. 844, was introduced in March 2025 by Missouri Republican Josh Hawley and is cosponsored by two other Republicans and 13 Democrats, including Jeff Merkley of Oregon. The identical House version, H.R. 5408, was introduced in September 2025 by Democrat Donald Norcross of New Jersey and is cosponsored by 17 Republicans and 86 Democrats, including Val Hoyle and Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon.
As is so often the case, the bills have been bottled up in committees with no hearings held or scheduled. So on March 26, Norcross filed what’s known as a discharge petition; if a discharge petition is signed by more than half of the House, the bill bypasses the committee and goes directly to a floor vote. On May 20, the discharge petition got to the magic number, 218 signatures. All Democrats signed, and so did seven Republicans.
A vote on the House floor is expected in early June.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said erroneously that Jared Golden of Maine was the lone Democrat not to sign the discharge petition. The Labor Press strives for accuracy and regrets the error.
