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A pair of prominent Senate Republicans have joined Senate Democrats in support of legislation that would roll back President Donald Trump’s executive order on federal unions, but whether the bill gets a vote remains in the air.
The House last week passed its version of the bill from Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, dubbed the American Workers Protection Act, that would reverse a March executive order barring collective bargaining for most federal unions across a variety of agencies, like the Departments of War, Justice, State, Energy, and Veterans’ Affairs.
That bill succeeded in the lower chamber with the aid of nearly two dozen House Republicans, but the same level of support among Senate Republicans is unlikely.
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So far, only Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, have signed on as co-sponsors to the Senate’s version of the bill, first introduced by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in September.
Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement to Fox News Digital that she agreed with Golden that “collective bargaining, which is afforded to federal employees under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, should be restored.”
And Murkowski argued that the country’s federal employees “deserved these protections.”
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“Collective bargaining rights and workplace protections have lifted up federal employees across the United States for decades, protecting them from unsafe working conditions and political retribution,” she said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
The push to nix Trump’s order likely won’t see the same level of bipartisan support in the upper chamber, given that the bill is currently sitting in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has introduced several right-to-work bills, and because one of the more pro-union Republicans, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is skeptical of the bill.
“I don’t know,” Hawley told Fox News Digital. “The public sector unions and private sector unions seem to be two different things.”
The House of Representatives passed the bill last week with support from 20 GOP lawmakers — a rare feat for a vote that was essentially a direct rebuke of one of Trump’s policies.
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Golden got a vote on his measure by filing a mechanism called a discharge petition. It is designed to force a vote on legislation over the wishes of leadership, provided it gets support from a majority of House lawmakers.
The final vote passed 231-195, with all the “no” votes coming from Republicans.
Such a mechanism does not exist in the Senate, but lawmakers could try to force a vote on the floor. That requires consent from Republicans, which is unlikely. But a source close to Golden told Fox News Digital that he was engaged in conversations with senators about getting enough support to press for a chamber-wide vote on his bill.
Golden told Fox News Digital on Friday that both he and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., were in discussions with senators to try and win support.
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He said he’d spoken with “a few” senators after the bill passed but added, “the real push is gonna be coming in the days and weeks ahead.”
And Warner, who is pushing the companion to Golden’s bill in the Senate, told Fox News Digital in a statement that Republican defections in the lower chamber was a “clear sign that these executive orders went way too far.”
“Republicans and Democrats alike are recognizing that you can’t run a functioning government by attacking the very workforce that keeps Americans safe,” he said. “The bipartisan momentum in the House only strengthens our hand in the Senate, and I intend to build on it.”
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