House Republicans’ headache of a week just got worse, as yet another piece of business legislation appears doomed to fail to an internal revolt of GOP lawmakers.
According to Politico’s Meredith Lee Hill, the GOP is likely to cancel a scheduled vote on Thursday for the Save Local Business Act authored by Rep. James Comer (R-KY). This legislation would limit the circumstances in which businesses can be classified as “joint employers,” a rule that protects labor rights for a number of workers from temps at staffing agencies, to farm hands, to janitors who serve multiple businesses.
A contingent of Republicans sympathetic to organized labor, which opposes the legislation, are reportedly revolting, with one lawmaker telling Hill, “If leadership insists on a vote, it’ll likely fail worse than today’s bill.” According to the report, leaders are likely to instead vote on a different joint-employer bill by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) that is aimed at protecting franchise businesses.
This comes after a chaotic night on Tuesday, where Republican defectors defeated a pair of bills to weaken overtime pay protections, and another bill to change the definition of a tipped employee. Of the four Republican bills on the docket Tuesday, the only one to pass was the SHOWER Act, a bill that relaxes water conservation rules for shower heads with multiple nozzles.
This marks the latest headache for Republican leadership as a small but persistent wing of the party tries to force greater input for organized labor.
President Donald Trump managed to improve the GOP’s standing with unionized workers in the 2024 election, and the leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters controversially maintained neutrality rather than endorse Democrats, in return for having a say in Trump’s nomination for Secretary of Labor. This has led certain Republicans to argue the party should soften its traditional anti-labor policy positions and exercise more caution in bills that are opposed by unions, putting them at odds with the majority who still advocate for business interests.
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