The Sharpest Attack on the Faster Labor Contracts Act Came From a Union Electrician

The Sharpest Attack on the Faster Labor Contracts Act Came From a Union Electrician

Forty years in the trade, and he doesn’t want Washington writing his contract either.

Steve Sydow, a union electrician in Ironton, Ohio published a guest column in The Ironton Tribune on July 16 opposing the Faster Labor Contracts Act. He’s asking Senator Jon Husted to vote no and Sen. Bernie Moreno to reconsider cosponsoring it.

If you haven’t tracked this bill, now is the time. H.R. 5408, sponsored by Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) (former president of Southern NJ AFL-CIO Central Labor Council), passed the House on June 9, 2026 by a vote of 220-193. It got to the floor on a discharge petition — 218 signatures, 211 Democrats and 7 Republicans. The Senate companion, S. 844, comes from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and sits in the HELP Committee, with a hearing expected in October.

The mechanics, in plain English. Once a union is certified, you have to start bargaining within 10 days of its written request. No agreement in 90 days, either side can call in the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. If that doesn’t close it within 30 more days, a three-person arbitration panel decides the terms. Whatever the panel writes governs your workplace for two years.

Roughly 120 days from a written request to a contract nobody at the table agreed to.

Now here’s Sydow’s objection, and it isn’t the one employers make. The members never get to vote on it. He quotes IAM shop steward Joshua Arnold: “That would be removing the democracy from the workplace, which is the whole point of the union, giving the workers a say.”

Labor isn’t united on this. The Teamsters endorsed the bill. Sydow and the machinists he cites see a ratification vote getting written out of existence.

For employers: assume this becomes law and run the math on your own exposure. If you’re facing a first contract, the entire negotiation now fits inside four months, and a panel of strangers finishes anything you don’t. Your bargaining calendar, your written proposals, and your documented movement stop being good practice and start being the record that panel reads.

When a 40-year union electrician and a management-side labor lawyer land on the same side of a bill, somebody in Washington should probably read it again.

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