by Tom Zawistowski
Ohio businesses are getting squeezed from every direction right now. Tariff uncertainty is disrupting supply chains. Input costs are up. The labor market hasn’t fully stabilized. Many of the business owners I know are just trying to keep their people employed and their doors open. That context matters when you look at what Congress is considering doing to them next.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act (H.R. 5408) would impose a federal timeline on first-contract collective bargaining negotiations. Bargaining must start within 10 days of a union election. If there is no agreement within 90 days, a government mediator steps in. If mediation fails, a government-appointed arbitration panel takes over and writes the contract—wages, benefits, working conditions, all of it. The employer has no further say. Neither do the workers.
Here’s what the bill’s supporters won’t tell you: it actually makes the negotiating process worse, not better. Under the FLCA, unions have every incentive to drag their feet. Why make concessions at the table when a government arbitrator is waiting at the end of the process? The bill rewards bad-faith bargaining by guaranteeing a backstop for the side that refuses to move.
It also directly contradicts the agenda Ohio workers and employers voted for. President Trump has already tagged the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service—the obscure agency that would gain sweeping new authority under the FLCA—for elimination. He signed an executive order that called for reducing the agency, and the latest FY2027 budget proposal goes even further, explicitly calling for “the orderly closure of FMCS.” The FLCA would require a massive investment in that same bureaucracy at the exact moment the administration is trying to eliminate it.
And make no mistake about who loses when an arbitrator shows up. Workers lose the right to vote on their own contract. Union constitutions across the country require member ratification—workers get to approve or reject what their representatives negotiate. Under the FLCA, that vote could disappear. A government panel hands down a binding two-year agreement and workers are stuck with it.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act is practically copy-and-pasted from a section of the PRO Act, the unions’ sweeping labor reform bill. The PRO Act has never been able to pass Congress, because Americans understood what government-written labor contracts meant.
Representatives Rulli, Miller, and Carey represent Ohio workers and Ohio employers. This state’s economy does not need Washington adding new layers of uncertainty and government interference to the already complicated business of running a company and keeping people working. I’m calling on our representatives to reject this bad deal for workers and businesses and you should too: Rulli 202-225-5705, Miller 202-225-3876, and Carey 202-225-2015.
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Tom Zawistowski is the President of the We the People Convention and Executive Director of the Portage County Tea Party. He is also the founder of TRZ Communications, a technology company based in Akron, Ohio.
