The “Faster Labor Contracts Act”: Not Law Yet. But Stand By

“Life in the fast lane, surely make you lose your mind”.

–Joe Walsh, Glenn Frey and Don Henley, The Eagles, 1976

The law, like a glacier, moves slowly. Significant changes in federal labor relations law – which deals with the relationship between employers and their employees’ bargaining representatives – are no exception. They’re quite rare. The basic framework of the law – the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), which was enacted in 1935 under President Franklin Roosevelt – has changed little in 91 years. The Act’s provisions for the right of private sector employees to form and join labor unions, to require employers to engage in “collective bargaining”, and to engage in protected “concerted activity” have been more or less intact for decades.

Historical Context

The NLRA, like almost all legislation, was passed to solve a perceived (or at least ostensible) problem. The problem in this case stemmed from inadequate wages and poor (and sometimes dangerous if not deadly) working conditions in the early 20th century. Employees, to protest them, engaged in strikes, which were economically disruptive and sometimes violent. The NLRA was a response to all that and was enacted to give employees the right to band together to seek better wages and working conditions, to promote industrial peace, and to try to bring some measure of balance to the typically lopsided relationship between employers and employees.

The Act compels employers and employees’ bargaining representatives to engage in collective bargaining in “good faith”, but it has never required them to reach agreement. The NLRA, on that point, could hardly be clearer: it says explicitly that the obligation to bargain collectively “does not compel either party to agree to a proposal or require the making of a concession”.

Upsetting the Apple Cart – How the Law May Change

A bill pending before Congress would change that dynamic entirely. If it were to become law, then it would, in some cases, wrest much of the control over collective bargaining from the parties themselves and hand it over to a panel of arbitrators. The bill, entitled the “Faster Labor Contracts Act” (“FLCA”), was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June 9, 2026. Whether the Senate will approve it is of course anyone’s guess, but one cannot dismiss the bill as liberal fantasy. One of the bill’s sponsors is Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

In a nutshell, the bill, if enacted into law, would require employers to “meet and begin bargaining collectively” “not later than 10 days after receiving a written request for collective bargaining from an individual or labor organization that has been newly recognized or certified” as the employees’ bargaining representative. That’s new. The FLCA would apply only in cases in which “collective bargaining is for the purpose of establishing an initial bargaining agreement” after “an individual of labor organization” has been certified by the National Labor Relations Board as employees’ bargaining representative. But federal labor law has never before imposed a deadline by which bargaining must begin. (That has always been up to the parties themselves, at least until the point at which it has become obvious that one of the parties is simply refusing to play ball.)

Under the FLCA, if the parties have failed to reach an agreement within 90 days of the date on which bargaining began, then either party can ask the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (“FMCS”) to get involved. That’s not radical. Parties to collective bargaining have long been free to call upon the FMCS to assist with bargaining if either party believes that its help would be productive (as it often is).

Can’t Reach Agreement? Arbitrators Standing By …  

But here’s where the FLCA would upend a premise of federal labor law that has been in place since before World War II. The law has never required parties to agree to terms of a collective bargaining agreement; it has only required them to engage in collective bargaining in good faith attempts to reach such an agreement. The law, in other words, has always compelled parties to engage in a process but has never required them to agree to anything or impose a consequence on the parties if they don’t.

The proposed law would change that. The bill provides that “if[,] after the expiration of the 30-day period beginning” on the date on which one (or both) of the parties asked the FMCS to help, the Service has not been “able to bring the parties to agreement by conciliation, [then] the Service shall refer the dispute to a 3-person arbitration panel“. That panel, or at least a majority of it, “shall [then] render a decision settling the dispute”. Its “decision shall be binding upon the parties for a period of 2 years” unless the parties agree otherwise.

Think about that. Employers and their employees’ bargaining representatives, under current law, decide for themselves what the terms of a collective bargaining agreement (if one is formed) will be. The proposed bill would in some circumstances take that power from the parties and confer it upon a panel of arbitrators who will decide for the parties what to include in a labor contract.

There are no doubt cases in which some employers engage in strategic foot dragging to prolong the process of reaching an initial collective bargaining agreement, in hopes of sapping their employees’ resolve. There’s currently nothing unlawful about that (at least until the employer can be plausibly accused of bargaining in “bad faith”). But that’s the perceived vice that the Faster Labor Contracts Act is obviously designed to address.

Whether that vice is substantial enough to warrant a legislative fix will no doubt be hotly debated. But the FLCA, if enacted into law, would change the dynamic of federal labor relations law dramatically. One therefore wonders whether the bill will be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Even so, that the FLCA has gotten this far indicates that the venerable and remarkably stable subject of labor relations law has garnered the attention of the legislative branch. That alone is worth watching.