At Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, workers voted to unionize in April 2022. More than three years later, they still don’t have a contract. Their experience is emblematic: Nearly half of newly-formed unions fail to secure a contract within a year of winning an election. After two years, a full third remain without one. Many never succeed at all.
The tactic of delay rarely makes headlines, but it strikes at the core of US labor law. A right delayed into irrelevance is no right at all. When organizing leads nowhere, cynicism takes root, and the entire system loses credibility. Fixing this problem ought to be the kind of reform that could earn support from across the political spectrum—and now it does.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act (FLCA) was introduced in the Senate in March by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO),Cory Booker (D-NJ), Bernie Moreno (R-OH), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Last week, Reps. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) and Pete Stauber (R-MN) introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives, an effort that has garnered 11 Republican cosponsors. It’s the first time in recent memory that labor reform legislation has been both bipartisan and bicameral. For a policy issue long thought to be irreparably polarized, this coalition reflects an emerging recognition that labor law must work better for American workers and that Republicans have a role to play in that renewal.
Saddled with a legal framework barely updated since the Great Depression, unions have seen their membership collapse from more than a third of private-sector workers in the early 1950s to less than 6 percent today. Bargaining power has withered. And the principle that workers should have a seat at the table has gradually been reduced to rhetoric.
Despite widespread acknowledgment that the system is broken, Congress has failed to act.
Republicans have largely celebrated organized labor’s decline, while Democrats have focused on maximalist overhauls that allow them to posture but have no chance of becoming law. In both 2019 and 2021, a Democratic House passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a sweeping package of labor reforms supported by unions and progressive activists, only for it to languish in the Senate, despite Democratic control of the chamber for the entirety of Joe Biden’s presidency.
“Labor reform has remained politically untouchable and substantively inert.”
Rather than negotiate reforms with Republicans, Democrats used legislation like the PRO Act as a political cudgel, a performative litmus test—“Oh, you’re pro-worker? Then why aren’t you a cosponsor of the PRO Act?”—and a reliable tool for raising small-dollar donations from the left. The strategy was clear: Wait for an even wider partisan window (or the abolishment of the legislative filibuster) and attempt to steamroll reform across the finish line. That strategy failed. The result: Labor reform has remained politically untouchable and substantively inert.
But times are changing. The Republican Party today draws its strength not from boardrooms and donor retreats, but from working-class Americans. These voters—truck drivers, waiters, welders, and electricians—once anchored the Democratic coalition. No longer. Since 2016, they have found a new home in the GOP. And if Republicans hope to keep them, they must legislate with their interests in mind. That requires more than talk of the “dignity of work.” It means doing what Democrats could not: update America’s ossified labor law.
The FLCA addresses a key weakness in existing law: the inability of many newly certified unions to secure a first contract. When workers vote to join a union, their employer is legally obligated to bargain in good faith. But too often that promise proves meaningless. Employers drag out negotiations as enthusiasm wanes, turnover rises, and the employer moves to decertify the fledgling union. For many workers, a win at the ballot box leads nowhere. What should mark the beginning of collective bargaining instead becomes the end.
The FLCA establishes a clear timeline for reaching a first contract. Employers must begin bargaining within 10 days of union certification. If no agreement is reached within 90 days, the parties enter mediation. If mediation fails after 30 more days, a three-person arbitration panel—composed of one representative from each side and one neutral member selected by mutual agreement—is empowered to impose a binding two-year contract. Some critics may object that it imposes terms by fiat, but the structure mirrors common dispute-resolution models already used in both labor and commercial arbitration. Crucially, it only applies to the first contract; future bargaining remains in the hands of employers and workers.
The process doesn’t favor labor over management. It simply ensures that bargaining can’t be stalled into irrelevance. The law already requires employers to negotiate; this legislation would ensure that they actually do, and that the process results in a contract rather than a stalemate.
Tellingly, this proposal originated in the PRO Act, but went nowhere when shackled to progressives’ unpopular demands. In a March 2025 survey, American Compass and YouGov tested constituent provisions of the PRO Act, and found that the first-contract arbitration process was among the most popular, with a net favorability of +40, including majority support among Republicans (+29) and overwhelming support among younger Republicans (+44). Other provisions like clearer notification of organizing rights and harsher penalties for employers that violate those rights were also broadly popular and may be next in line for bipartisan action. Controversial provisions that were preventing progress will fall by the wayside, as they should.
The FLCA won’t fix every problem in labor law, but it would be an important step in the right direction. If Republicans want to prove they can govern for the working class, this is their chance. And if Congress can pass a version of it, it may signal that a new labor politics—rooted in negotiation, not partisanship—is finally within reach.