Republican-led House votes to overturn Trump executive order on bargaining rights
- - Republican-led House votes to overturn Trump executive order on bargaining rights
Zoë RichardsDecember 12, 2025 at 3:14 AM
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President Donald Trump previously signed an executive order ending collective bargaining for some federal agencies. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)
The House approved a measure Thursday to reinstate collective bargaining rights to federal workers, a step toward restoring labor union protections for nearly 1 million federal employees.
The rare bipartisan vote, 231-195, marks the first time the House has voted to nullify an executive order from President Donald Trump this term.
Twenty Republicans voted with Democrats in supporting the bill, which was 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 who passed this bill,” Golden wrote Thursday on X.
Fitzpatrick wrote Thursday on X that the measure “restores something fundamental: the right of public servants to be heard, respected, and represented in their workplace,” and urged the Senate to “finish the job.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether he plans to bring the bill to a vote in the Senate.
Trump signed an executive order this year terminating collective bargaining with federal agencies tied to national security, citing authority under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. That law makes exceptions to organizing and collective bargaining for “agencies or units within an agency which has as a primary function intelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
The order in March affected the departments of State, Defense, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Justice and Commerce and part of Homeland Security focused on border security.
Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, which represents nearly 15 million workers, commended "the Republicans and Democrats who stood with workers and voted to reverse the single largest act of union-busting in American histories.”
“As we turn 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 union-busting boss in the White House," Shuler said in a statement Thursday.
The White House has defended Trump's posture toward 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 action to strip federal workers of collective bargaining rights when he signed an executive order in August under the same 1978 law that aimed to end collective bargaining with two agencies that are a 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 named units in the Bureau of Reclamation tasked with operating hydropower facilities, NASA, the Office of the Commissioner of Patents, the Patent and Trademark Office and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which funds news outlets like Voice of America, that Trump issued in an executive order to gut this year.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
