Posts tagged Lisa Murkowski
House passes bill to restore collective bargaining for federal employees
December 15, 2025 // “The president has been fighting back against the deals that public sector unions have negotiated for themselves, at the expense of the American taxpayer, by invoking an existing legal authority,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the Oversight committee. “[This bill] directly threatens that progress by overturning the president’s executive order that exercises one of the few tools available to him under the law to more effectively manage the federal workforce.”
House strips its own provision protecting Defense civilians’ union rights from NDAA
December 11, 2025 // A source familiar with congressional negotiations said that the bipartisan language effectively nullifying President Trump’s anti-union executive orders as they pertain to the Pentagon was dropped due to lack of support in the Senate.
Editorial Board: America’s veterans deserve better care than government unions provide
December 8, 2025 // The smarter approach would be for Congress to affirm Trump’s decision to strip collective bargaining rights while dispensing with his flimsy national security justification. Consider the legacy of pro-union President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who opposed collective bargaining and strikes for federal employees. As Roosevelt and other pro-union leaders understood in the 1930s, collective bargaining is carried out against an employer. The government’s employer is the public. Allowing unelected labor union bosses to negotiate against the public’s elected representatives to determine how the government gets run is undemocratic.
White House may nix pay for workers furloughed during shutdown
October 9, 2025 // Mark Paoletta, the OMB general counsel, wrote that the 2019 law is “not self-executing” and requires further appropriations to pay furloughed workers as part of stopgap legislation to end the funding lapse. The memo, which is labeled “pre-decisional and deliberative,” says that the requirement for “excepted” employees to keep working creates “binding legal obligations” to pay those workers. On the other hand, Paoletta writes there is no such obligation for furloughed workers who were “not performing services for the government” during the shutdown.
A Senate bill seeks to restore collective bargaining for a huge swath of federal workers
September 22, 2025 // Warner was quick to point out what union representation for federal workers does not do. “Let’s be clear, a federal union doesn’t have the ability to strike, or negotiate pay or benefits,” Warner said. But, he said, union representation for federal workers is designed to prevent discrimination and unlawful firings, as well as offer protections for whistleblowers.
Bill to nullify Trump’s union executive orders introduced by 48 senators
September 18, 2025 // All Senate Democrats and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have signed on as sponsors of the Protect America’s Workforce Act, while the measure is just two signatures away from guaranteed floor debate in the House.
Commentary: VA is selectively enforcing Trump’s order stripping workers of union rights
April 22, 2025 // But the same notice, without explanation, exempts eight small labor groups within the VA from Trump’s edict, effectively allowing them to retain their collective bargaining rights. Those unions include the Laborers International Union of North America, the Western Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, the Veterans Affairs Staff Nurse Council Local 5032 in Wisconsin, the International Association of Firefighters in Arkansas, the Teamsters Union Local 115 in Pennsylvania and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Hawaii. While Trump’s order exempts law enforcement and firefighter unions from losing their collective bargaining rights, that exception would apply only to the IAFF local.
DOGE will use AI to assess the responses of federal workers who were told to justify their jobs via email
February 27, 2025 // A coalition of unions and groups that have been fighting the Trump administration's mass layoffs of probationary workers charge the effort was unlawful. They amended their lawsuit against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management over the weekend to add a claim involving the OPM email directing workers to justify their workweek.
Biden Pushes Early Renomination of Failed NLRB Chair in Effort to Deny Possible Trump Administration Control over Labor Board
June 12, 2024 // The NLRB is composed of five members, usually three of whom are from the president’s political party and two from the opposing party. The Board uses both adjudication and rulemaking to put forward its interpretations of the NLRA, but it needs a quorum of three members to act. Currently, there are four Board members (see Board composition here). Three of the members are Democrats, while one is a Republican. The other Republican seat has been vacant since December of 2022, because President Biden chose not to nominate anyone to that vacancy for a year and a half. While agency vacancies and delays on nominations are nothing new in Washington, this one is notable and shows an unusual partisanship and dishonesty.
Pro-Union Shift Expected With Labor Board Member’s Pending Exit
August 21, 2023 // Abruzzo has asked the board to resurrect the Joy Silk doctrine—which would allow unions to bypass an official NLRB election with a card-check vote instead—and overturn the 1940’s Babcock & Wilcox ruling to make captive audience meetings unlawful. In another pending case, the board also may decide the fate of the 1970 Ex-Cell-O precedent, which prohibits the NLRB from forcing companies or unions to accept provisions of a collective bargaining agreement. Overturning that decision would allow the board to levy financial remedies against companies to compensate workers for what they could’ve earned with good-faith contract negotiations. The NLRB’s August agenda also includes finalizing regulations to expand the factors that can trigger a joint-employer finding. The rule, proposed nearly a year ago, would eliminate the stricter joint employment standard established by the Trump-era board. Other pending cases could boost the potency of worker strikes, expand the scope of labor law protections, and make other changes that bolster worker and union power.