I’ve watched Speaker Mike Johnson build a career rooted in exactly the kind of limited government principles that made Louisiana Republicans competitive in the first place. He knows what it looks like when Washington overreaches and the havoc it inevitably causes. Congress is now considering a bill—the Faster Labor Contracts Act (H.R. 5408)—that is a prime example of such overreach, and I urge him to lead the way in defeating it.

The Faster Labor Contracts Act is being sold as a commonsense fix for a real problem: workers sometimes wait too long for a first union contract after an election. The FLCA would set a federal clock on those negotiations—bargaining must begin within ten days, a mediator steps in if there is no agreement within 90 days, and if mediation fails, a government-appointed arbitration panel takes over and writes the contract. Employers and workers are bound to whatever that panel decides.

You heard that right; a panel of unelected bureaucrats could decide the terms of a union contract without workers ever having the chance to vote on it. That’s wrong. Such agreements would govern their wages and working conditions for the next two years. And if the workers didn’t like what the panel came up with? Well, they’d be stuck with it.

As a small business owner, I can tell you that negotiating your own agreements, on your own terms, is something you can take for granted until someone starts threatening to take it away. The FLCA would give an obscure federal agency—the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service—unprecedented new authority over private-sector labor relations. That expansion of federal bureaucracy runs counter to everything the Trump administration has been working toward since taking office. In fact, the President has now formally proposed eliminating it entirely; the newly released FY2027 budget proposal explicitly calls for the closure of the FMCS. The administration wants this agency gone—yet the FLCA would require a massive expansion of it.

The economic research backs up the concerns I have. A Mercatus Center analysis of 147 studies over three decades found that when union contracts are driven by outside pressure rather than mutual agreement, the result is slower job growth, reduced business investment, and a higher likelihood of layoffs down the road. Big wins at the bargaining table, secured by outsized union leverage rather than cooperation, have a way of costing workers more than they gained.

The FLCA also isn’t a new proposal. It is a single provision pulled from the PRO Act, the Democrats’ broad rewriting of labor law. That legislation has failed to make it into law for good reason—it would hurt the very workers it claims to protect.

I know Speaker Johnson understands what’s at stake when Washington inserts itself into private agreements and starts writing the terms. A discharge petition (H.Res. 1140) is now circulating to force a floor vote in the House and members are being asked to sign. I urge him to send a strong message to the Republican caucus that the Faster Labor Contracts Act will hurt American workers and should be rejected.