Josephine Ferro: Don’t let the FCLA fool you

Why is it that supposedly “pro-labor” legislation usually ends up hurting workers instead of helping them? Too often, proposals that claim to champion the cause of working people actually end up doing the exact opposite. The Faster Labor Contracts Act, currently under consideration in Congress, falls squarely into that category. 

According to this bill’s proponents, when workers vote to form a union, they often wait too long for a first contract. The FLCA would impose deadlines on that process in an effort to force a speedy resolution. As is often the case, it’s a compelling pitch, but one that proves unworkable when you look closer at the details. 

Under this bill, if contract negotiations stall and the process reaches arbitration, a government-appointed panel steps in and writes the contract. Wages, benefits, workplace safety standards — all of it would be decided by people who have never set foot in the workplace and whose decision the workers themselves have no right to reject. No ratification vote. No say. A two-year binding agreement handed down from government bureaucrats.

At a Senate hearing last October, a Boeing shop steward was asked directly about this scenario. His answer was unambiguous: if workers lost the right to vote on their own contract through arbitration, he said, “that would be removing the democracy from the workplace, which is the whole point of the union, giving the workers a say.” A union man, testifying for the pro-union side, identified the FLCA’s central flaw before a Senate committee.

The right to ratify a contract is a core protection in ensuring workers have a direct voice in their agreements. It is the moment when workers, as a group, decide whether the deal on the table is worth accepting. The FLCA would deprive workers of that moment and hand it to a panel of arbitrators. Whatever else you call that, you cannot call it pro-worker.

It is also worth knowing where this bill actually comes from. The FLCA is not a new idea — it is a provision pulled directly from the PRO Act, the sweeping labor law overhaul that spent years going nowhere in Congress because it could not attract bipartisan support. The Teamsters’ own spokeswoman described the PRO Act as something “trotted out in election years for scorecards, not results.” The FLCA is a piece of that failed legislation wrapped up in different packaging.

There are real ways to address the problem of stalled first-contract negotiations. The National Labor Relations Board already has authority to go after employers who genuinely refuse to bargain in good faith. Strengthening enforcement, increasing transparency, making bad-faith tactics more costly — these approaches keep workers at the center of the process. The FLCA replaces the process with government fiat.

Congressman Rob Bresnahan has spent his career demonstrating what genuine commitment to working people looks like — employing union labor at his family’s electrical contracting business, serving as a trustee for IBEW 163’s Health, Wellness, and Annuity Funds, fighting for the workers in our communities who show up every day and deserve to be treated fairly. His record on labor is not a political calculation. It reflects who he is.

That is exactly why I hope he will take a second look at the FLCA. The bill he has cosponsored would take away from workers the very thing he has spent years defending: their voice. Urging him to reconsider is not a criticism. It is a recognition that he knows better than most what real labor protections are supposed to do.

The FLCA should be measured by what it actually delivers, not what it promises. Workers deserve a seat at the table. This bill pulls the chair out from under them.

Josephine Ferro is former Monroe County Register of Wills and Recorder of Deeds.