By Chris Isidore, Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — A group of House Republicans handed President Donald Trump a rare rebuke on Thursday, voting to restore collective bargaining rights he had stripped from about 1 million federal workers earlier this year.

But the legislation still faces significant hurdles before it can become law and aid the unions and their members.

Trump has moved to void labor contracts for about 700,000 federal workers as part of his move to take more control of the federal workforce. He wants to defund their unions by ending the practice of collecting union dues from workers’ paychecks.

Trump signed an unprecedented executive order in March citing national security as the reason to strip many federal workers of their collective bargaining rights. The unions and their allies decried the move, saying it was part of the president’s efforts to dismantle the federal workforce which he sees as an impediment to pushing through his agenda.

But the vote late Thursday afternoon saw 20 Republicans join all the present Democrats to pass a bill 231-195, a vote that Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said “demonstrated their support for the nonpartisan civil service.”

The vote was a win for unions and for the federal workers, many of whom went without pay during the record six-week government shutdown in October and part of November.

The vote took place only because, as was the case on the vote on the release of Jeffery Epstein files, enough Republicans joined virtually all House Democrats to force legislative action through a so-called “discharge petition.”

Unions had been rallying for the bill, arguing the erosion of federal workers’ job protections and rights represented an existential threat to the broader American labor movement. Almost half the nation’s union members are government workers.

Federal employees unions have been fighting the Trump executive orders in court. But after a district court paused the orders from taking effect, an appellate court overturned that union win. This legislation has the potential to be even a greater victory than anything they could win in court though.

The legislation could face an even tougher fight in the Senate and it is tough to imagine Trump signing a bill that would overturn his own executive action. But labor leaders vowed to continue the fight.

“It’s an uphill climb, but many people said it would never pass the house,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, told CNN ahead of the vote when it became clear it had the bipartisan support needed to pass this first step. “We are keeping our foot on the gas for the Senate to do the same.”

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