Congressman Bresnahan secures vote to restore union rights for federal workers

A discharge petition led in part by Congressman Rob Bresnahan has secured enough signatures to force a House vote on a bill restoring collective bargaining rights to federal employees.

U.S. Representative Rob Bresnahan Jr. says Discharge Petition Number Six has officially crossed the threshold, meaning the House must now take up the Protect America's Workforce Act.

The bill would reverse an executive order that stripped collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal employees across agencies like Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration, and the Bureau of Prisons.

Here in Northeastern Pennsylvania alone, more than 10,000 federal workers could be affected. Bresnahan says for him, this is personal, and it's why he became one of only five Republicans to sign the petition back on September second.

"This was just something that obviously hit home. It was the right thing to do, down to Tobyhanna army depot, where we have nearly 4000 employees to the VA hospital, to our IRS, to our social security administration. We have our international airport. Everything that we talked about during the government shutdown and the federal employees were its 2.94% of our workforce are federal workers," said Bresnahan.

Bresnahan believes the House could take up the vote by December, and he expects strong bipartisan support.

"I think this will be something that will pass the house overwhelmingly. I don't see much pushback. I think you're going to have different opinions, different ideologies," said Bresnahan.

If passed, this legislation would restore collective bargaining protections to roughly 67% of the entire federal workforce nationwide.

"We are an outlier when it comes to our workforce when nearly 3% of our workforce are federal workers. If you call the 1-800 number for the social security administration, those numbers are routed through Wilkes-Barre. You think about the volume, the workload, and obviously just the uncertainly of when was the government going to reopen or am I going to have my ability to collectively bargain?" said Bresnahan.