Republican-led House votes to overturn Trump executive order on bargaining rights
The House approved a measure Thursday to restore collective bargaining rights to federal workers, a step toward restoring union protection for nearly 1 million federal employees.
The rare bipartisan vote, 231-195, marks the first time the House has voted to overturn an executive order from President Donald Trump this term.
Twenty Republicans voted with Democrats in favor of the bill, introduced by Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, a Democrat, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a Republican. The bill now heads to the Senate.
“This is solidarity in action. I’m proud of the bipartisan coalition that passed this bill,” Golden wrote on X on Thursday.
Fitzpatrick wrote on
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether he planned to bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote.
Trump signed an executive order this year ending collective bargaining with federal agencies related to national security, citing authority from the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. That law provides exceptions to organizing and collective bargaining for “agencies or units within an agency that have as their primary function intelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
The March order affected the departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Justice and Commerce, as well as a portion of Homeland Security focused on border security.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, which represents nearly 15 million workers, praised “Republicans and Democrats who stood with workers and voted to overturn the largest anti-union act in American history.”
“As we look 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 anti-union boss in the White House,” Shuler said in a statement Thursday.
The White House has defended Trump’s stance on unions, saying in a document accompanying the order when he signed the order in March that some federal unions had “declared war” on his agenda and that Trump “refuses to let union obstruction interfere with his efforts to protect Americans and our national interests.”
Trump took further steps to strip federal workers of their collective bargaining rights when he signed an executive order in August under the same 1978 law that sought to end collective bargaining with two agencies that are part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service and the National Weather Service.
The August order also names units of the Bureau of Reclamation responsible for operating hydroelectric facilities, NASA, the Office of the Commissioner of Patents, the Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which funds media outlets like Voice of America, which Trump issued in an executive order aimed at gutting this year.
