Four years.
That is how long it took the staff of Rep. Ro Khanna, one of Congress’s most outspoken supporters of organized labor, to negotiate their first long-term union contract.
That fact should give Congress something to think about as the Senate considers the Faster Labor Contracts Act.
Khanna’s staff voted to unionize in 2022. The bargaining unit was tiny — just eight employees. The member supported the unionization effort. And the resulting agreement dealt with relatively straightforward workplace issues, including salaries, grievance procedures, and working conditions.
Still, reaching a binding agreement took four years.
That doesn’t mean collective bargaining failed. In fact, it may demonstrate precisely the opposite.
Khanna’s chief of staff offered perhaps the best explanation for why negotiations took time: a union contract affects people’s lives, is legally binding, and therefore has to be gotten right.
Exactly.
Collective bargaining is supposed to involve workers and employers sitting across from each other, working through difficult questions and eventually reaching an agreement both sides can live with. Sometimes that happens quickly. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Congress should remember its own experience before imposing a radically different standard on the rest of America’s workplaces.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act, which passed the House in June, attempts to address a legitimate problem. Workers who vote to organize should not be denied a contract because an employer simply refuses to bargain seriously or uses delay as a strategy to undermine a newly formed union.
Supporters of FLCA point to research showing that reaching a first contract currently takes an average of roughly 15 months. They understandably want to prevent employers from running out the clock on workers who have exercised their right to organize.
But FLCA’s solution risks replacing one problem with another.
Under the legislation, an employer must begin bargaining within 10 days of a union’s request. After 90 days without an agreement, either party can request federal mediation. If another 30 days pass without agreement, the dispute can move to a three-person arbitration panel that can impose the terms of the first contract. That agreement can remain binding for two years.
Think about the contrast.
Eight congressional employees negotiating with a strongly pro-union member of Congress took four years to get their agreement right.
FLCA essentially gives private-sector workers and employers roughly four months before the process can move toward having outsiders determine the terms for them.
And those agreements can be vastly more complicated than a congressional office contract.
Imagine negotiations involving hundreds or thousands of employees across multiple facilities, shifts, and job classifications. The parties may have to negotiate wages, health benefits, retirement plans, overtime, scheduling, seniority, job classifications, safety rules, leave policies, grievance procedures, technology and workplace changes.
Increasingly, they may also need to negotiate how artificial intelligence and automation affect jobs and work.
These are not details. They are the substance of people’s livelihoods and businesses.
The irony is hard to miss.
Congress has now seen firsthand that even when management supports unionization, the workers want a contract and the bargaining unit is small, negotiating a first agreement can take considerable time.
Yet Congress is considering telling the private economy that failure to reach agreement in a fraction of that time can justify transferring critical decisions to arbitrators.
There is a better way.
Congress should distinguish between delay and bad-faith delay.
If an employer refuses to come to the table, repeatedly cancels bargaining sessions, withholds necessary information, or otherwise attempts to frustrate workers’ right to organize, labor law should provide meaningful and timely consequences.
Workers shouldn’t have to wait years simply because an employer hopes their union will disappear.
But when employers and workers are bargaining seriously, government should give them the space to bargain.
The goal of labor policy shouldn’t be the fastest possible contract. It should be a durable contract negotiated by the people who actually have to live under it.
That distinction matters for workers as much as it does for employers.
A government-imposed agreement isn’t necessarily the agreement workers would have negotiated themselves. Bargaining is about tradeoffs. Workers might accept one wage structure in return for stronger health benefits, different scheduling protections or better job security. Employers likewise understand operational realities that an outside arbitration panel may not.
Those choices belong, as much as reasonably possible, to the people at the bargaining table.
There is an important lesson here for both parties.
Republicans shouldn’t treat unions as an obstacle to economic growth. Workers have a legitimate right to organize and bargain collectively.
Democrats shouldn’t assume that supporting workers requires Washington to dictate how quickly bargaining must conclude.
A modern pro-worker agenda should defend the right to organize, insist on genuine good-faith bargaining and punish those who deliberately subvert the process — while recognizing that genuine negotiation takes time.
Ro Khanna and his staff ultimately reached an agreement. That is something worth celebrating.
But the four years it took them to do so should also teach Congress some humility.
If lawmakers believe their own employees deserve the time necessary to negotiate a contract carefully, America’s workers and employers deserve that same consideration.
Collective bargaining works best when government protects the right to bargain — not when government replaces bargaining with a stopwatch.
