Protect America's Workforce Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GILL of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time on this important issue.

I strongly oppose this bill because it would jeopardize our national security, and it locks in harmful last-minute agreements from the Biden administration.

Union bosses love this bill for one reason: It protects their telework perk. It also shields them from accountability and gives them effective veto power over a duly elected President with a mandate to clean up a bloated Federal bureaucracy.

Specifically, this legislation would nullify President Trump's executive order titled ``Exclusions From Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs.'' The executive order wisely designated various agencies as having a national security focus as their primary functions and exempts them from collective bargaining.

Union officials do not and should not have the right to use their collective bargaining power to undermine President Trump and jeopardize our national security.

One example of this just fairly recently is ICE not being able to modify cybersecurity policies without giving its union bosses an opportunity to negotiate, delaying needed cybersecurity updates.

In another example, union bosses threatened to block the Office of Personnel Management from implementing basic IT security controls.

There is a troubling pattern where union bosses block measures that they don't like, forgetting that they work for the American people and not the other way around.

The President's executive order also improves care for veterans. On August 6, 2025, the VA announced that it is terminating most union contracts to comply with the executive order.

Employees at the VA currently spend 750,000 hours engaging not in care for veterans but in union activities. That is every single year. The President's executive order will lead VA employees to spend more time helping veterans and less time in union activities.

It goes even further. This bill forbids the Trump administration from unwinding any collective bargaining agreement signed before March 26, 2025.

After Democrats lost the 2024 elections, the Biden administration hurried to ink multiyear deals that they knew they would never have to enforce, deliberately tying the hands of their successors and rewarding union leadership on their way out.

One example is especially egregious: the Social Security Administration deal that allows maximum telework, prohibits management from reducing it, and applies to 98.5 percent of the agency's workforce.

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Mr. GILL of Texas. The Protect America's Workforce Act is nothing short of an attempt to prevent President Trump from reforming the Federal bureaucracy. It undermines national security and rewards union bosses who think that they run the government. I urge opposition.

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