{"id":9909,"date":"2026-04-17T00:50:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T00:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/hegseth-orders-termination-of-dod-union-contracts\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T00:50:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T00:50:24","slug":"hegseth-orders-termination-of-dod-union-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/hegseth-orders-termination-of-dod-union-contracts\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth orders termination of DOD union contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week instructed department leaders to terminate most of the department\u2019s collective-bargaining agreements, more than a year after President Trump signed an executive order banning federal employee unions from many agencies on national-security grounds.<\/p>\n

In an April 9 memo obtained by Government Executive<\/em>, Hegseth gave his deputies 24 hours to take action to cancel most union contracts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hereby direct the termination of all collective bargaining agreements \u00a0to which the department is a party, not subject to a court order enjoining implementation to which the department is a party, not subject to a court order enjoining implementation of Executive Order 14251, \u2018Exclusions from Federal Labor-Management Relations Programs,\u2019 within 24 hours of the date of this memorandum, except as applied to the population covered by the [April 2025] secretary of defense certification . . . and the local employing offices of any agency police officers, security guards or firefighters, pursuant to EO 14251,\u201d the secretary\u00a0wrote last week. \u201cThis action is required to align agency operations with national security requirements as outlined in EO 14251.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year ago, Hegseth\u00a0exempted bargaining units of Federal Wage System workers at four installations: the Letterkenny Munition Center in Pennsylvania, the Air Force Test Center in California, the Air Force Sustainment Center in Oklahoma, and the Fleet Readiness Center Southeast in Florida.<\/p>\n

Spared from the new\u00a0memo are the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and the Federal Education Association, which last fall secured preliminary injunctions blocking implementation of the executive order. The order\u00a0cites a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act as authority to strip two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective-bargaining rights on national-security grounds,.<\/p>\n

Not so for AFGE, the nation\u2019s largest federal-employee union. In a statement Wednesday, National President Everett Kelley decried Hegseth\u2019s decision as \u201ccowardly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 50 years, these employees have exercised their union rights; under several administrations, during a global pandemic and throughout peacetime and wartime, including our most recent conflict with Iran,\u201d he said. \u201cTo rip up the union contracts of civilian employees after touting a successful ceasefire in the Middle East is not only a slap in the face to the employees who supported those efforts, but again proves that this action has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with silencing workers\u2019 voices.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n