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EXCLUSIVE: Bipartisan House lawmakers are actively lobbying the Senate to take action on a bill reversing President Donald Trump’s executive order on federal worker unions, a moderate Democrat said.
Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, successfully forced a vote on his legislation Thursday evening despite little appetite from the majority of House Republicans. It passed, however, with 20 GOP lawmakers’ support — a significant number at a time when few in the party are willing to publicly butt heads with Trump.
“When I said on the House floor that union collective bargaining rights are not a partisan issue, I meant it,” Golden told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. “The greatest evidence of that is union members themselves. They vote Democrat, they vote Republican. They don’t all vote, but they might vote if they knew that someone supported their collective bargaining rights.”
Golden introduced his bill in April and a companion was brought forward in the Senate in September. It has support from two Republicans as of now — Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine — the latter of which appeared to sign on after House passage on Thursday evening.
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“I didn’t talk to her last night, but I’m really glad to see her on. It’s not a surprise to me. She’s supported unions on certain issues in the past, so she’s obviously a very important senator,” said Golden, who worked for Collins before coming to Congress himself.
He did say he spoke with “a few” senators after the bill passed but added, “the real push is gonna be coming in the days and weeks ahead.”
And Golden is not lobbying senators alone — he said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., a moderate Republican who championed the bill in the House, is working alongside him.
Fox News Digital reached out to Fitzpatrick’s office for comment.
“As you probably saw, it was a long process in the House, so you’ve got to stay dogged and be patient. It’s important to do it in a way that’s bipartisan, to create space for members of both parties to work together,” Golden said. “I made sure all along that the Republican co-sponsors of the bill were comfortable with our messaging and also the steps that we were taking, so it’s gonna need to be just like that in the Senate, too.”
Golden said he expected more Republican senators to sign on in the coming days.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., for instance, has not backed the legislation as of Friday afternoon, but Golden said he was a “great example” of someone who’s “shown himself to be pro-labor.”
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Hawley has also previously introduced his own bipartisan pro-union legislation earlier this year that would speed up the labor contract process for new unions. That bill is endorsed by Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien, a friend of the lawmaker’s.
Fox News Digital reached out to Collins, Murkowski and Hawley’s offices for further comment.
Golden got his bill passed by filing it as a discharge petition, which is designed to force a vote on legislation over the wishes of leadership, provided it gets support from a majority of House lawmakers.
Discharge petitions are rarely successful in the House but have been used more frequently this year as Republicans grapple with a razor-thin majority.
In Golden’s case, five House Republicans had signed onto the petition along with 213 Democrats — Fitzpatrick and Reps. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., Don Bacon, R-Neb., Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Nick LaLota, R-N.Y.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., introduced the companion version of Golden’s legislation in September. He said in a statement to Fox News Digital, “The bipartisan momentum in the House only strengthens our hand in the Senate, and I intend to build on it.”
Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Golden have a relationship that dates back to his first time in Washington, D.C., not as a lawmaker, but as a staffer for the longtime Maine senator. They’re also both known to buck their respective parties.
Just before Golden’s successful vote, Collins joined Senate Democrats to back their three-year extension of expiring Obamacare subsidies.
But Warner’s bill has sat in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, for several months. Whether it survives committee is unclear, given that Paul has introduced several right-to-work bills over the years.
Republican opponents of the bill have said federal workers’ unions are not the same as labor unions in the private sector, arguing that collective bargaining is a different scenario when working against Americans’ own elected officials rather than for-profit companies.
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