Republicans Begin Bucking Trump on Government Union Rights

Rank-and-file Republicans are rebuffing President Donald Trump’s push to abolish many federal sector unions, warning their leaders that pro-union conservatives helped the party take control of both chambers of Congress.

More than a dozen House Republicans joined Democrats to bring up a vote on a bill (H.R. 2550) reversing Trump’s executive orders that ended collective bargaining rights for an estimated 1 million government workers. Sixteen Republicans also joined Democrats in an unsuccessful attempt to restore union rights for some civilian employees of the Department of Defense as part of the annual defense bill.

While the effort to save some public sector unions hasn’t yet garnered enough support to reverse Trump’s policies, it laid bare a rift in the Republican party over how to reduce government bureaucracy while appealing to working-class voters ahead of the 2026 midterms. It also demonstrated the limited support unions are seeing from Republican party leaders.

“We should not be the party of no, the party of take away, the party that hurts people,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), a former Democrat who voted to advance the bill restoring unionizing rights to federal workers. “Our majority would not be a majority without Republicans who are, for example, pro-union.”

The pro-union Republicans signed onto an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act led by Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), that would have allowed civilian Defense Department workers to join unions by creating an exception from Trump’s executive orders. Those orders used an expansive definition of national security to ban government unions at various federal agencies.

“For me, it’s a basic, fundamental philosophical issue that you should, as an American citizen, be able to be in a union or not,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who supported the defense amendment but not the union rights bill told Bloomberg Law in an interview. “There’s nothing else to it.”

Trump’s two executive orders, issued in March and August, are the broadest attack on federal sector unions since those workers were granted the right to collectively bargain under an executive order from President John F. Kennedy in 1962.

Trump’s orders face multiple legal challenges from unions, alleging that the administration used an implausibly broad definition of national security to justify denying workers the right to join a union.

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit is set to hear arguments in three of those cases on Monday. Unions have persuaded a district judges to suspend Trump’s orders temporarily, though some appeals courts have allowed the orders to move forward while legal challenges play out.

The vast majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill still side with the president on this issue. The Senate’s companion bill currently has one Republican sponsor, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

While some have tried to attract the support of organized labor, Republicans have been reluctant to embrace public-sector unions which conservatives have often claimed are enablers of waste and bureaucratic dysfunction.

“In the government, it is, I think, a different situation,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican who has sought support from private-sector unions by backing collective bargaining legislation. “The Teamsters versus Amazon, that’s a David and Goliath situation,” while federal workers “have a powerful employer, but you also have numerous additional protections that government workers get, that private-sector unions do not get.”