The prospect of including abortion and transgender medicine insurance coverage in union contracts is pitting socially conservative Republicans against each other as a labor relations bill works its way through Congress.The Faster Labor Contracts Act, which Democrats passed by a special procedural maneuver with some Republican support in the House on June 9, is fracturing the conservative coalition on multiple fronts. Many free marketeers oppose the legislation as putting a thumb on the scales for organized labor. But others oppose it on socially conservative grounds, arguing it could require employers to cover abortion and transgender medical procedures, such as cross-sex hormones, mastectomies, and vaginoplasty.The FLCA, sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), would require employers to bargain within 10 days of union certification to prevent employers from stalling first-time union contracts.
Current labor laws impose no timeline for reaching a first contract, but opponents of the status quo say it takes an average of over 450 days to negotiate the first union contract. Hawley and Booker’s legislation, if passed, would trigger a mandated arbitration process involving a three-arbitrator panel if a contract is not agreed upon within 120 days of establishing a union. The employer and employees would each select an arbitrator alongside a third neutral party as a tiebreaking vote.
