A crown jewel piece of legislation Barack Obama wanted is back from the dead.
A RINO just promised a room full of Teamsters it will pass – and he said it on camera.
What comes next is something conservatives stopped once before.
The Employee Free Choice Act and the PRO Act Provision That Refused to Die
In 2009, Democrats were unstoppable.
They had 60 Senate seats – a filibuster-proof supermajority. Pelosi ran the House. Obama had just won a historic election. And they still could not pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
EFCA was too extreme even for some Democrats.
The bill wanted card check – union organizers intimidating workers one by one, in the open, until they signed authorization cards. It wanted to replace contract negotiations with federal arbitrators who could write their own terms and impose them for two years without a worker vote.
Senate Democrats in competitive states looked at their constituents and blinked. EFCA died.
The card-check piece stayed dead. The binding arbitration piece did not.
It’s back and four signatures away from the House floor.
What the Faster Labor Contracts Act's Binding Arbitration Provision Actually Does to Workers
Here is the mechanism the Faster Labor Contracts Act puts into law.
After a union wins a workplace vote, the employer has 10 days to begin negotiations.
After 90 days without a deal, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service steps in. After 30 more days without agreement, the agency convenes a three-person arbitration panel. That panel writes the contract. Both the union and the employer are bound for two years with no worker vote and no ratification.
Heritage Foundation analysts documented exactly what government-written contracts do in practice.
Michigan tried compulsory arbitration for police and firefighters in 1969. Twelve years later, the mayor of Detroit admitted it had been a catastrophe. "Slowly, inexorably, compulsory interest arbitration has destroyed sensible fiscal management," Detroit Mayor Coleman Young told the National Journal in 1981, "and has caused more damage to the public service than the strikes it was designed to prevent."
That was government, where you just bill the taxpayers when the arbitrator gets it wrong.
In the private sector, a company that cannot afford the contract an arbitrator writes does not get to bill anyone. It closes. Workers lose jobs the arbitrator never had to worry about keeping. And under the FLCA, they are locked in for two years with no appeal and no vote.
How Sean O'Brien Used Teamsters Money to Buy the Republican Votes He Needed
Teamsters President Sean O'Brien has been running the smartest influence operation in Washington.
He spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024 – the first Teamsters president to address a GOP convention. The Teamsters' political arm then distributed $62,000 to nearly two dozen House Republicans in 2025, targeting members in competitive districts.
Rob Bresnahan, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Mike Lawler – three of the four Republicans who signed the discharge petition – were on that contribution list.
The Teamsters still give more to Democrats. They sent $15,000 to the DCCC last year while placing smaller checks with targeted Republicans. That is not realignment. That is a shopping list – fund the members who can deliver the vote, keep funding the party that wants the bill anyway.
The outcome O'Brien is buying is binding arbitration – faster imposed contracts, faster dues revenue, faster money into the political operation that has spent decades writing checks primarily to Democrats.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick told the Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters Convention in Hershey on April 27: "It will be brought to the floor and it will pass. That is a guarantee."
The Discharge Petition Is Four Signatures Away From Bypassing Speaker Johnson
The discharge petition sits at 214 signatures. Democrats hold 214 seats. Every Democrat signed.
Four Republicans joined them: Fitzpatrick, Bresnahan, Lawler, and Max Miller of Ohio.
A discharge petition bypasses the Speaker entirely once it hits 218. Johnson cannot block it, cannot table it, cannot do anything about it.
If the FLCA clears the House it faces a harder road in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes. But midterms are coming, and Fitzpatrick already said the quiet part out loud.
Republicans killed EFCA in 2009 by holding together against the same mechanism they are now helping deliver.
Mike Lawler. Rob Bresnahan. Brian Fitzpatrick. Max Miller.
Four Republicans who took Teamsters money, signed the petition, and handed Sean O'Brien what Barack Obama could not get with 60 Senate seats.
Sources:
- Jace White, "Why Are Republicans Looking To Pass Obama-Era Forced Unionization Bill?" The Federalist, May 19, 2026.
- James Sherk, "How the Employee Free Choice Act Takes Away Workers' Rights," Heritage Foundation, March 2009.
- Shikha Dalmia, "The Employee Free Choice Act and Binding Arbitration," Reason Foundation, 2009.
- C. Jarrett Dieterle, "Josh Hawley's Pro-Union Bill Would Let Washington Write Your Contract," Reason, May 16, 2026.
- "Beltway Buzz, May 15, 2026," National Law Review.
- "Teamsters Pour Money Into GOP, Shifting Away From Dems," Daily Caller, August 2025.