WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) urged the House of Representatives to prohibit the Defense Department from implementing a presidential executive order that restricts federal collective bargaining rights. This request followed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's termination of AFGE contracts in April 2026.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 that restricted union activities at most federal agencies. A second executive order in August 2025 expanded these restrictions to six additional federal agencies. The executive order cited a provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, which exempts federal employees from labor law for national security purposes.

Daniel Horowitz, legislative director of AFGE, wrote a letter to the leadership of the House Armed Services Committee requesting the nullification of the executive order for Defense Department workers. "The statutory exemption Congress wrote into Title 5 was deliberately narrow, reserved for agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency whose missions are uniquely incompatible with bargaining," Horowitz wrote. "Applying it broadly across the entire Department of Defense departs significantly from that design and longstanding precedent," Horowitz wrote. Horowitz noted that Trump never invoked the exemption during his first term. In 2020, Trump attempted to delegate authority to invoke the exemption to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, but Esper declined to use it.

In 2025, Representative Donald Norcross introduced an amendment to the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to nullify the executive order at the department. The House of Representatives passed the 2026 NDAA with this amendment included. However, the Senate later removed the collective bargaining amendment from its version of the 2026 NDAA.

Multiple lawsuits challenging the executive orders remain pending in federal courts. Federal courts have declined to issue injunctions halting the implementation of the executive orders. The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the Federal Education Association preserved collective bargaining rights for their members at the department.

No independent assessment was available for this report.