Twenty House Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues Wednesday to rebuke the Trump administration on federal union organizing.
The bipartisan legislation, spearheaded by retiring moderate Democratic Maine Rep. Jared Golden, restores organized labor benefits for nearly a million of federal employees across major government agencies. A small group of Republicans worked with Democrats to circumvent House Speaker Mike Johnson and force a vote on the measure.
The legislation passed 231 to 195 with 20 Republicans crossing party lines to reverse Trump’s crackdown on federal unions.
The defecting GOP lawmakers include Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Don Bacon of Nebraska, Nicole Malliotakis, Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota and Andrew Garbarino of New York, Tom Kean, Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith of New Jersey, Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, Mike Turner and Dave Joyce of Ohio, Mike Bost of Illinois, Gabe Evans of Colorado, Peter Stauber of Minnesota, David Valadao of California and Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin.
The cohort largely represents swing districts that Democrats are seeking to flip during next year’s midterm elections. Bacon is retiring at the end of his current term.
All Democrats who were present supported the measure.
The House vote was largely symbolic. The Republican-controlled Senate is unlikely to take up the bill and the White House would almost certainly veto the measure.
The bipartisan legislation rescinds Trump’s March executive order, which exempted a vast swath of government employees from collective bargaining rights. Trump argued the directive was critical for national security, though it covered agencies whose missions appear tangential to that goal.
Golden, a centrist Democrat from a Republican-leaning seat who passed on running for reelection in 2026, argued his legislation will protect federal workers from unfair treatment.
“Federal workers’ bargaining rights are already limited. Unlike private-sector unions, federal employees cannot bargain collectively over wages, benefits or classifications, nor can they strike under existing law,” Golden wrote in a Tuesday press release. “Their bargaining rights are limited to conditions of employment. Roughly one-third of all federal workers in unions are veterans.”
“After months of coalition-building, a bipartisan majority made clear that protecting America’s security and respecting America’s workers are not competing priorities,” Fitzpatrick wrote on X Wednesday. “They are inseparable.”
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer of Kentucky led debate against the legislation.
“I urge my colleagues to buck federal union bosses, put Americans first and oppose the so-called ‘Protect America’s Workforce Act,’ Comer said on the House floor.
Golden and Fitzpatrick introduced a discharge petition to force a vote on the measure over the objections of House GOP leadership. The petition secured the key 218th signature — marking its support by a simple majority of lawmakers — in November.
The federal organizing legislation is not the only measure that lawmakers have put on the floor to circumvent Republican leadership using a discharge petition. The bipartisan bill compelling the Trump administration to release the Epstein files in November also relied upon the procedural maneuver to advance to the House floor.
