Twenty Republicans joined House Democrats on Tuesday to pass a bill aimed at making it easier for workers to secure union contracts, a rare showing of bipartisan support in Washington for rebuilding organized labor.

The Faster Labor Contracts Act would require employers to start bargaining with a new union within 10 days; if they don’t reach an agreement in three months, the two sides would go before a mediator to help broker a deal. If that fails, the dispute would head to binding arbitration.

The legislation is being pushed by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Democratic Rep. Donald Norcross (N.J.), co-chair of the Congressional Labor Caucus. But it would not have gone anywhere without the help of more moderate Republicans willing to buck the party’s employer-friendly line.

The bipartisan coalition used a maneuver known as a discharge petition to force the vote over the objections of GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.). It ended up passing 230 to 193.

The legislation isn’t going anywhere while Republicans still hold the Senate and President Donald Trump wields veto power, but the Teamsters celebrated the House vote as a sign Republicans were willing to work with Democrats to strengthen unions.

“The Teamsters Union is grateful to all members of the U.S. House who had the courage to stand with workers, to put aside partisan politics, and to advance this legislation,” Fred Zuckerman, the union’s general secretary-treasurer, said in a statement.

Norcross said that the legislation could become “the single biggest advancement in workers’ rights in nearly a century.”

“The biggest loophole in labor law is how the richest executives in human history can simply run out the clock on their workers’ first union contract,” Norcross said in a statement. “That dirty tactic is selfish, it’s immoral, and today’s vote also puts it one step closer to being a relic of history.”

It can take notoriously long for workers to secure a first contract after winning a union election — on average, 465 days, according to a 2022 analysis by Bloomberg News. Many employers slow-walk the bargaining process in hopes the workforce will turn over, union support will fade over time and workers will give up rather than keep fighting — and there are basically no meaningful penalties to discourage employers from doing so.

Unions and labor law experts have said for years that the law needs to be amended in order to make it easier to reach a collective bargaining agreement. They have plenty of contemporary cases to point to in arguing the system is broken: More than four years after first unionizing, workers at Amazon, Starbucks and other companies are still fighting for first contracts.

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) has introduced a companion bill to Norcross’ legislation on the Senate side. Hawley is a friend of the Teamsters who’s argued for his Republican colleagues not to be so reflexively anti-union. But he still hasn’t found sufficient GOP backing in the Senate for the bill to go anywhere: So far, only Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno and Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall have joined him as Republican co-sponsors.

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