Federal Collective
Bargaining Reform
A LIUNA Local 1776 report

One signature took bargaining rights from a million federal workers. Congress can make sure it never happens again.

A national security exception written for spy agencies was used in 2025 to pull most of the federal government out of the collective bargaining law. That was the latest in fifty years of attacks. This site shows how it happened, who was spared, every hole in Chapter 71, and the rewrite that closes them.

LIUNA Local 1776Updated Nov. 10, 20265 U.S.C. § 7103(b)
1,066,423Union-represented federal workers who lost bargaining rights, counting TSA
40+Agencies and subdivisions excluded by one order on March 27, 2025
34.8%Share of the workforce still in a bargaining unit, June 2026, down from about 56%
231–195House vote to cancel the orders, with 20 Republicans voting yes

Working draft. Items tagged Source pending still need a citation before launch. Dashed boxes mark where a photo or document image will go, and gold circles mark where an agency seal will go.

The case in nine points

What happened, and what to do about it

01

A law written for spy agencies was used on the VA, the EPA and the Weather Service

The exception covers agencies whose primary function is intelligence or national security work. In 2025 it was stretched over most of the government.

See who was hit ›
02

Police, firefighters and the Border Patrol kept their rights

If bargaining threatened national security, the people carrying guns at the border would be first on the list. They were left off.

See who was spared ›
03

The White House put its reason in writing

Its own fact sheet complained that certain unions had “declared war” on the president's agenda.

Read the timeline ›
04

Congress said bargaining is “in the public interest.” That is still the law

The finding has been in the U.S. Code since 1978. No Congress has repealed it.

Read the timeline ›
05

Executive orders are written in pencil

Every gain made by order has been erased by the next president who wanted it gone. Only a change to the statute lasts.

See why ›
06

The House bill cancels the orders and leaves the door open

It would undo 2025. It would not stop the next president from doing the same thing the next morning.

See the fix ›
07

33 holes in Chapter 71, and a fix for each

The national security exception is the biggest. The lack of any real enforcement is right behind it.

See the holes ›
08

Official time costs about one-tenth of one percent of payroll

The talking points about taxpayers do not survive the government's own numbers.

See the record ›
09

The window to change the law opens January 3

Twenty House Republicans already voted yes, and much larger majorities are about to be seated. Majorities like this do not last.

See where Congress stands ›
10

Nobody has to join, and nobody bargains over pay

Membership is voluntary by statute. Congress sets pay and benefits. What unions bargain is working conditions.

See the facts ›
11

The Pentagon wants to end the National Guard technician program

Nine of every ten positions would go to military personnel, who are barred by law from bargaining.

See the National Guard page ›
12

Its own estimate says the swap costs $248 million more

That is the first five years of a ten-year plan. A 2017 Pentagon study reached the same conclusion.

See the numbers ›
What happened?
On March 27, 2025, the president signed an order declaring that more than 40 agencies and subdivisions have a primary function of national security work. That one finding removed them from the federal bargaining law. A second order in August added more. Contracts were cancelled, grievances were dropped, and dues deductions were shut off.
Was that legal?
The courts are split. Trial judges in Washington, San Francisco and Rhode Island found the orders likely unlawful or retaliatory. Two appeals courts let the orders take effect anyway, deferring to the president on national security. A third appeals court went the other way in May 2026.
Who was spared?
Police, firefighters and security guards. Customs and Border Protection, home of the Border Patrol union that endorsed the president. And at Veterans Affairs, smaller unions the department said had caused it little trouble.
Doesn't the bill that passed the House fix this?
It fixes 2025. The Protect America's Workforce Act cancels the two orders and restores the contracts. It does not touch the section of law that made the orders possible.
What does this proposal do?
It rewrites Chapter 71 from end to end. The national security exception becomes narrow, justified in writing, approved by Congress, and reviewable by a court that does not have to take the president's word for it. The rest of the chapter gets what it has never had: real penalties for breaking it, referees a president cannot bench, and contracts that hold.
Why not wait for a friendly president to sign a new order?
Because the next unfriendly one will cancel it. That has been the pattern since 1962. Rights that depend on who won the last election are not secure, and federal workers have spent fifty years defending the same ground. Only Congress can change the statute, and the statute is what lasts.
The bottom line
A right that one person can erase with a signature is not a right. Congress created federal bargaining by law, and Congress should be the one to decide who is left out of it.
Timeline · 1883 to 2026

It took 76 years to win a voice. It took one signature to take it away.

Federal employees won the right to bargain step by step, under presidents of both parties. Follow how that right was built, how it was chipped at for 45 years, and how the exception was finally turned on most of the workforce.

Direction
Who acted
 ·   · 
The playbook

Nine ways they have come at federal bargaining

The orders of 2025 were not new ideas. Each tactic below has been tried before, some of them for forty years. Federal unions have beaten most of them one at a time, in court or in Congress, and then waited for the next one. The point of rewriting the statute is to stop playing defense.

Who was hit, who was spared

The list of “national security” agencies

Every department, agency and office named in the two 2025 orders. Search for yours. The White House tied the list to eight themes: national defense, border security, foreign relations, energy security, pandemic preparedness, cybersecurity, the economy and public safety.

Order
Department or agencyWhat was excludedOrder

Source: text of Executive Order 14251 (March 27, 2025) and Executive Order 14343 (August 28, 2025). TSA officers lost bargaining through a separate Homeland Security decision on March 7, 2025. Employee counts by agency are still being compiled.

Declared national security work

Bargaining rights removed

  • Nurses and doctors at VA hospitalsDepartment of Veterans Affairs, the entire department
  • Weather forecastersNational Weather Service
  • Patent examinersOffice of the Commissioner for Patents
  • Meat and poultry inspectorsFood Safety and Inspection Service
  • Scientists and engineers at the EPAEnvironmental Protection Agency, the entire agency
  • Land managers and rangeland staffBureau of Land Management
  • IRS customer service and processing staffDepartment of the Treasury, all but one bureau

Kept their bargaining rights

Left out of the orders or carved back in

  • Border Patrol agents and customs officersCustoms and Border Protection was not named in either order
  • Agency police officers, security guards and firefightersCarved out by section 1-499 of the order, except at the Bureau of Prisons
  • The people who print the moneyBureau of Engraving and Printing, the one Treasury bureau excepted
  • Smaller unions at Veterans AffairsSpared by the Secretary. The department said they had “posed no or minimal hinderance.”
  • Any Defense or VA unit the Secretary choosesSection 4 lets two cabinet secretaries hand rights back unit by unit

“Certain Federal unions have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.”

White House fact sheet on the order, March 27, 2025
By the numbers

The scale of it

Four out of five union-represented federal workers lost bargaining rights

Workers represented by federal unions, by status after the 2025 actions

Source: Center for American Progress analysis of 2024 OPM data. Includes about 47,000 TSA officers.

Coverage fell off a cliff in one year

Share of the federal workforce in a bargaining unit

Source: Office of Personnel Management. Figures come from different OPM reports, so compare with care. Postal workers are not counted.

The 1981 air traffic controller firings were 94 times smaller

Federal workers affected

Sources: ABA Journal on the 1981 air traffic controllers; Center for American Progress for 2025.

Official time has cost about one-tenth of one percent of payroll

Salary and benefits for hours spent on representation, in millions

Source: OPM official time reports. OPM changed its cost method for fiscal 2019, and its fiscal 2024 report shows costs up about 54 percent from that year. GAO has found the estimates run 9 to 15 percent low at agencies it sampled.
The holes · 5 U.S.C. Chapter 71

33 ways the law lets bargaining be switched off

A section-by-section audit of the whole chapter, from who is covered to what happens when an agency simply ignores the law. Each hole has a fix Congress can write into the statute.

Issue
 · 

The Congressional Research Service has told Congress it can narrow the president's authority, define national security in the statute, or list excluded agencies by name.

The fix

Rewrite Chapter 71 so the rights in it can be enforced

Two tracks. One stops the damage now. The other makes sure it cannot be repeated.

The dome of the U.S. Capitol under a cloudy sky, seen through bare trees
The U.S. Capitol. What an executive order gives, the next one can take away. A statute stays.

Executive orders are written in pencil

Federal bargaining began as an executive order in 1962, and for 16 years it lasted only because each president chose to keep it. Every gain made by order since then has been erased by the next president who wanted it gone. Clinton's partnership order was revoked by his successor. The 2018 orders were cancelled in 2021 and came back in broader form in 2025.

A friendly president can sign a good order in an afternoon. An unfriendly one can cancel it just as fast. Only a statute outlasts an election.

Strike while the iron is hot

The Congress seated on January 3, 2027 will have the largest House majority since 2008 and at least 54 Democratic seats in the Senate. That is short of the 60 votes needed to end a Senate filibuster and the two-thirds needed to override a veto, so nothing is automatic.

It is enough to pass a bill through the House, put every senator on the record, attach a funding bar to bills the president has to sign, and have the full rewrite written and ready for the day it can become law. Majorities like this do not last. The time to write the statute is now.

Track one · now

Cut off the money

Attach one sentence to the next spending bill or defense bill: no funds may be used to carry out Executive Orders 14251 or 14343. The House already passed language like this once, in its version of the fiscal 2026 defense bill.

Track two · permanent

Rewrite Chapter 71

A fix for each of seven issues across the whole statute: who is covered, what can be bargained, who referees, how the law is enforced, and what a union needs to function. Introduce it now and build the record.

Issue 1
Who is coveredNarrows the national security exception and takes it out of one person's hands: written findings, approval by Congress, court review, a sunset, no delegation. Makes the same change for the Foreign Service. Brings TSA officers under the chapter and narrows the exclusions for VA medical staff. Tightens the definitions that keep employees out of bargaining units. Bars any future personnel system from waiving the chapter unless Congress says so in express terms.
Issue 2
What can be bargainedMakes staffing, technology and methods of work mandatory subjects instead of optional ones. Writes the long-standing bargaining threshold and the duty to bargain during a contract into the statute. Stops government-wide rules and executive orders from taking subjects off the table or voiding agreements. Limits an agency head's power to veto a signed contract.
Issue 3
Referees a president cannot benchA career deputy acts automatically when the General Counsel's seat is empty, and regional directors can issue complaints. Every stage of a case gets a deadline. Bargaining impasses go to neutral arbitrators chosen by the parties. When the board cannot or will not act, unions can go to court.
Issue 4
Enforcement with teethA right to sue in federal district court. Injunctions available to unions, and required when an agency repudiates a contract. Civil penalties for willful violations. Full make-whole relief, including lost dues, interest and attorney fees. Discipline for officials who order violations. Board orders that take effect without a second lawsuit. No unilateral changes while a dispute is pending.
Issue 5
Contracts and arbitration that holdUnions can get a court order compelling an agency to arbitrate. Arbitrators' awards get deference, with review in court. The list of subjects excluded from grievances is fixed in the statute. Agencies comply while an appeal is pending.
Issue 6
The union's ability to functionProtects official time, dues withholding, and reasonable access to the workplace, to employees and to information from limits imposed by order or guidance.
Issue 7
Restoration and purposeVoids Executive Orders 14251 and 14343 and restores every agreement in effect on March 26, 2025. Older exclusion orders expire in two years unless reissued under the new rules. Adds a rule that the chapter is to be read broadly to protect the right to bargain.

Working title: the Federal Workforce Bargaining Rights Protection Act. The bill itself is numbered by section, with no titles. Statutory text is drafted for Issue 1 (sections 2 through 5 of the draft) and for the restoration piece of Issue 7 (section 6). The rest is in outline. Each issue matches a group of holes on The Holes page.

The facts

Three facts about federal unions that the talking points leave out

Membership is voluntary. Pay and benefits are set by Congress, not at the bargaining table. And the government's own numbers show the system is cheap to run. Each one comes from the statute or from a government report, linked under it.

Fact 01

Nobody has to join, and nobody has to pay

The federal government has no closed shop, no agency fee and no “fair share” payment. It never has. An employee can spend a whole career in a union-represented job without joining or paying a cent, and the union still has to represent that employee.

What the law says

Every employee has the right to join a union “or to refrain from any such activity, freely and without fear of penalty or reprisal.” 5 U.S.C. 7102

The union must represent everyone in the unit “without discrimination and without regard to labor organization membership.” 5 U.S.C. 7114(a)(1)

Dues come out of a paycheck only when the employee signs a written authorization. 5 U.S.C. 7115

That is why official time exists. A union that must represent non-members for free, and may not charge them, was given paid time to do it. AFGE, the largest federal union, says more than half of the employees it represents pay no dues.

Represented is not the same as dues-paying

Federal workers in 2025, in thousands

About 162,000 federal workers told the Bureau of Labor Statistics they were covered by a union contract without being members. The survey is a household survey and its federal count includes the Postal Service.
Fact 02

Federal unions do not bargain pay or benefits

Congress sets federal pay, health insurance, retirement and leave by statute. The bargaining law takes anything “specifically provided for by Federal statute” off the table. What is left is working conditions: schedules, safety, fair procedures and how a change gets carried out.

What the law says

“Conditions of employment” do not include matters set by federal statute. 5 U.S.C. 7103(a)(14)(C)

Mission, budget, staffing levels, hiring, assignments and discipline are reserved to management. 5 U.S.C. 7106

Striking is an unfair labor practice and grounds for removal. 5 U.S.C. 7116(b)(7) and 7311

The Congressional Research Service puts it in one line: “Most federal employees cannot bargain over wages or benefits.” The other side agrees. A Heritage Foundation analyst wrote in 2025 that federal unions are, with few exceptions, “prohibited from bargaining for pay and most benefits.”

The exceptions are small and Congress wrote each one. About seven agencies bargain pay under their own statutes, and the Postal Service bargains pay under a separate law.

Who decides what

For most federal employees under Chapter 71

Set by Congress or reserved to management

  • General Schedule pay rates
  • The annual pay raise
  • Health insurance
  • Retirement
  • Life insurance and leave
  • Budget, mission and staffing levels
  • Hiring, assignments, discipline

On the bargaining table

  • Schedules and shift bidding
  • Safety and equipment
  • The procedures managers follow
  • Grievance and arbitration steps
  • How a change is carried out
  • What happens to the people it affects
The left column is why federal contracts do not drive federal spending. The right column is what was cancelled in 2025.
Fact 03

Bargaining is cheap, and where the savings were measured it paid for itself

The main taxpayer cost of federal bargaining is official time: paid hours employees spend representing coworkers in grievances and negotiations. In fiscal 2019 that came to 2.6 million hours and about $135 million across the government, or less than two hours a year for each represented employee. It is about one-tenth of one percent of federal pay and benefits.

What the record shows

An independent Booz Allen analysis of the Customs Service partnership with its union found about $1.25 back for every dollar spent, and $3 million in net savings from 1993 to 1998. Senate Hearing 112-417

The labor board reported that cases settled without litigation rose 47 percent under partnership. Kelly Air Force Base alone avoided $2 million in litigation costs, and NASA projected $40 million in savings from changes its labor-management groups proposed. Government Executive, 1996

A peer-reviewed study of federal partnerships found they reduced labor-management disputes. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2006

Conflict is the expensive part. GAO estimated that processing 6,448 unfair labor practice charges in one year cost about $25.9 million. GAO, 1982

The clearest current example is in the National Guard. The Pentagon's own estimate says replacing union-eligible technicians with military personnel will cost about $248 million more over five years. See the National Guard page.

What we could not findNo CBO, CRS or RAND study puts a single dollar figure on the net savings from federal bargaining, and we will not invent one. The studies that find public unions raise costs are studies of state and local governments, where unions bargain pay and benefits. One of the best known found the effect was largest for benefits. Federal unions bargain neither. Anzia and Moe

About $1 in every $1,000

Official time as a share of federal pay and benefits

Each square is $1 of every $1,000 the government spends on pay and benefits. The gold square is official time. OPM put the share at about one-tenth of one percent.

For the arguments critics make and our answers, see Myths.

Myths and the record

What critics claim, and what the record shows

The arguments against federal bargaining come mostly from the Heritage Foundation, its Project 2025 and allied groups. Here are the main ones, next to the facts.

Where critics have a point, and our answer

  • Presidents of both parties have used this exception.True. Carter used it first, in 1979. The difference is scale and selectivity. For 45 years the list was intelligence offices and a few law enforcement units. In 2025 it became most of the government, minus the unions that endorsed the president or stayed out of his way.
  • Two appeals courts sided with the administration.True, at the preliminary stage. A third appeals court and trial judges in three districts have gone the other way. When courts split on what a law allows, the answer is for Congress to say what it meant.
  • The government undercounts what official time costs.GAO found the estimates ran 9 to 15 percent low at the agencies it sampled, and many offices keep poor records. We support better reporting. Even at the higher number, the cost is a rounding error in the federal payroll.
  • Bargaining can slow management down.Sometimes it does, and Congress can set firm timelines for it. Slow is not the same as dangerous, and the law already lets managers act first in an emergency.
National Guard technicians

The Guard's full-time civilians, and the plan to replace them with soldiers who cannot bargain

LIUNA Local 1776 represents National Guard technicians and Title 5 employees. They are a category of federal employee found nowhere else, and for fifty years state adjutants general have tried to get them out from under the bargaining law. In 2026 the Pentagon asked Congress to end the technician program altogether.

31,699technician positions authorized in the Army and Air National Guard
89%of them would become AGR military positions under the Pentagon's plan
$248Mmore over five years, by the Pentagon's own estimate
2038the year the technician program ends for good under the plan
An F-15 fighter on the flight line with two ground crew members working beside it at dusk
A Louisiana Air National Guard F-15 on the flight line. Full-time technicians keep the Guard's aircraft and vehicles ready between drill weekends.

Three kinds of full-time Guard employee

Dual-status technicianTitle 5 Guard employeeAGR
What they areFederal civilian employees who must also hold membership in the Guard and wear the uniform at workFederal civilian employees with no military requirementGuard members on full-time military duty
Legal basis32 U.S.C. 7095 U.S.C. 3101, converted from technician positions in 201732 U.S.C. 328 and 502(f)
Bargaining rightsYes, under Chapter 71, on civilian matters. Suspended by Executive Order 14251Yes, under Chapter 71. Suspended by Executive Order 14251None. A federal crime under 10 U.S.C. 976
Appeal rightsMerit Systems Protection Board and EEOC on civilian matters since 2016. The adjutant general is final on military mattersTitle 5 appeal rights and the EEOCMilitary channels only
Under the 2026 planProgram ends October 1, 2038About 11 percent of the workforceAbout 89 percent of the workforce

How technicians got bargaining rights, and every attempt to take them back

Rights gained or defendedRights lost or attackedMixed
    A line of National Guard cargo trucks parked in convoy, the lead truck carrying a sign that reads Convoy Follows
    Louisiana National Guard trucks staged in convoy. Photo: Louisiana National Guard, via DVIDS.

    Seal of the Department of DefenseSeal of the National Guard BureauThe AGR conversion

    What the plan does

    On May 11, 2026, the Defense Department sent Congress a proposal to phase out dual-status technicians over ten years. The House wrote it into its defense bill as section 1105. The Senate committee's bill has a similar section 513.

    • No new technicians may be hired starting October 1, 2028.
    • Technician positions convert to AGR or to Title 5 civilian positions. The stated end state is 89 percent AGR and 11 percent civilian.
    • An occupied position converts only with the employee's written consent.
    • Section 709 of Title 32 is repealed on October 1, 2038. After that date no technician can be paid.

    The Department's stated reasons are readiness and workforce management. Its proposal says dual status is a burden on the technician, that career paths are rigid and that running two personnel systems is complicated. A National Guard Bureau paper adds that hiring a technician takes about 90 days against 30 for an AGR. The adjutants general, the National Guard Association and the enlisted association support it.

    Two estimates, one direction

    Net added cost of the conversion by year, in millions of dollars

    The Pentagon's figures are from the resource table in its own proposal and total $248 million. Local 1776's are from the conservative scenario in its June 2026 cost model and total $282 million through fiscal 2032. Neither is an official score.

    What it costs: Local 1776's analysis

    $282Madded cost every year once the conversion is complete in fiscal 2038, conservative scenario
    $451Madded cost every year by fiscal 2038, sensitivity scenario
    $1.55Bcumulative added cost, fiscal 2027 through 2038, conservative scenario
    $2.48Bcumulative added cost over the same years, sensitivity scenario

    How we got there

    In June 2026 Local 1776 gave Congress a 44-page cost analysis with the spreadsheet behind it. The model is simple on purpose so anyone can check it.

    • The baseline is the law. The fiscal 2026 defense act authorizes 31,699 technicians and 56,827 AGRs in the Army and Air Guard.
    • The conversion is the Pentagon's. At 89 percent, about 28,212 technician positions become AGR and 3,487 become Title 5.
    • The premium is modest. $10,000 more per AGR position per year in the conservative scenario, $16,000 when allowances, health care and retirement are loaded in. Title 5 conversions are counted as costing nothing extra.
    • What is left out makes the number low. No transition costs, no retraining, no lawsuits, no lost state contributions, no loss of experience.

    These are our benchmarks, built from published Defense Department, CBO and CNA findings. They are not an official score. We have not found one from the Congressional Budget Office or GAO, and Congress should not vote until it has both.

    The cost keeps climbing until every position is converted

    Added personnel cost per year, in millions of fiscal 2026 dollars

    Local 1776 cost model, June 2026. The hiring freeze takes effect October 1, 2028, and conversions are spread evenly over fiscal 2029 through 2038. After 2038 the cost continues every year at the top of the line.

    Where the Pentagon's own number comes from

    The proposal's resource table shows what moves. By fiscal 2032 the Guard would spend about $2.7 billion a year more on AGR pay and allowances. It would save about $2.1 billion on civilian technician pay and about $470 million in drill-status pay. The difference is a net increase.

    AGR pay and allowances+$2,694M
    Civilian technician pay−$2,124M
    Drill-status pay (the table's “M-Day” line)−$472M
    Net cost in fiscal 2032+$98M

    Army and Air Guard combined. The Army Guard shows a net increase of $140 million in that year and the Air Guard a net saving of $42 million. Source: Defense Department legislative proposal, resource table, May 11, 2026.

    It was also the answer in 2017

    The Institute for Defense Analyses studied the question for the Pentagon at Congress's direction. It found that replacing technicians with AGRs costs the same or more in every reserve component.

    For the Army National Guard, converting every technician to a mix of 80 percent AGR and 20 percent civilian added about $398 million a year in program cost and $762 million a year when retirement and other long-term costs were counted. For the Air National Guard the figures were $156 million and $490 million.

    What a complete cost comparison has to count

    A paycheck comparison leaves most of the cost out

    What the government pays for each kind of position

    Dual-status technician

    • Civilian pay
    • Civilian retirement (FERS)
    • Government share of health insurance
    • Government share of life insurance
    • Employer Social Security and Medicare
    • Agency retirement savings contributions
    • Drill pay and annual training
    • Reserve retirement at age 60

    AGR

    • Basic pay
    • Housing allowance, tax free
    • Subsistence allowance, tax free
    • Military health care at no cost to the member
    • Retired pay accrual
    • Retirement savings contributions
    • Moves and other military personnel costs
    • A replacement after 20 years
    Illustrative framework from Local 1776's cost report, Appendix D. It lists what a CBO or GAO score should include on each side. It is not a score.

    One technician career can span two AGR careers

    The same full-time job over 40 years

    Illustrative example: a technician hired at 17 who retires at 57. An AGR member can retire with immediate pay after 20 years of active service, so in the second 20 years the government pays one AGR's salary and another's retirement. The experience walks out the door at year 20 as well.

    Fifty years of studies, and none found savings

    The entries marked pending are cited in Local 1776's June 2026 cost report and will be linked to the original documents before launch.

    It ends bargaining for good

    An executive order can be cancelled by the next president. A converted position cannot bargain under any president.

    AGR members serve on “full-time National Guard duty.” Federal law makes it a crime to enroll them in a union or to bargain on their behalf. Chapter 71 separately excludes members of the uniformed services from the definition of employee.

    Bargaining is not all that goes. A technician can take a firing to the Merit Systems Protection Board and a discrimination complaint to the EEOC, with a union representative alongside. An AGR member has military channels, and the proposal offers nothing to replace what is lost.

    It fixes nothing

    The Department has not named a job an AGR can do that a technician cannot. The proposal shows the opposite. One of its own subsections has to amend 32 U.S.C. 328(b) so that AGR members are allowed to do the maintenance and repair work technicians already do.

    The work does not change. The equipment does not change. What changes is who does it, what it costs and whether the people doing it have any rights on the job.

    Why we say ending bargaining is one of the drivers

    The proposal never mentions unions. The Department says this is about readiness. Here is the record that leads us to a different conclusion.

    • The adjutants general asked Congress to ban technician unions in 1978.Fifty-three of them, through the National Guard Association, asked that technicians be removed from the bargaining program. Congress refused.
    • The Guard Bureau tried three times in two years to pull technicians out of the civilian discrimination complaint process.In 2013 by internal direction, in the fiscal 2014 defense bill, and in a 2015 reorganization plan, it sought to move technician complaints into military channels with no union representative. LIUNA and the Association of Civilian Technicians opposed each one and Congress wrote the rights into section 709 instead. Source pending
    • Ohio's adjutant general walked away from a 45-year bargaining relationship in 2016.The Ohio Guard declared the bargaining law did not apply to technicians and shut off dues. It lost at the labor board, at the Sixth Circuit and at the Supreme Court, 7 to 2.
    • The Pentagon's 2017 study treated technician bargaining as a problem.It warned that bargaining over military aspects of the program could hurt readiness, and it noted that AGRs cannot unionize.
    • The Secretary has said where he stands.Asked by lawmakers in 2026 why he cancelled nearly every union contract in the Department, he said it “should not be subject to collective bargaining.”
    • Money is not the reason.By the Department's own estimate the conversion costs more. If savings were the goal, the civilian share would not be 11 percent.

    The alternative the Pentagon passed over

    If the goal is a simpler, more modern workforce, there is a way to get it that saves money and keeps every capability: convert technicians to Title 5 civilian positions. Congress did it for part of the workforce in 2017. LIUNA supports a full conversion.

    A Title 5 employee draws no housing or subsistence allowance, pays a share of health insurance and earns a civilian retirement. CBO's studies of replacing military personnel with civilians point the same way. The Pentagon chose a workforce that is 89 percent military instead.

    What Congress should do

    • Strike section 1105 of H.R. 8800 and section 513 of S. 4784 from the final fiscal 2027 defense bill.
    • No phase-out without a CBO score and a GAO review. Both should compare the Pentagon's plan with the status quo and with a full Title 5 conversion, on the same assumptions.
    • Keep the rule against coercion. The fiscal 2026 defense act already bars a state from pressuring a technician into conversion or punishing one who declines.
    • Keep civilian protections in place. Bargaining, appeal and discrimination complaint rights should stay with the workforce through any transition.
    • Name technicians and Title 5 Guard employees in the rewrite of Chapter 71, so neither the national security exception nor a position conversion can be used to empty their bargaining units.

    Where it stands

    The House passed its defense bill on July 22, 2026, by 216 to 212, with the phaseout in it. The Senate never passed its version. The four Armed Services leaders are expected to negotiate a final text in the lame-duck session, with a vote in December.

    Local 1776 gave the Senate committee its response in May and its cost analysis in June. AFGE and IFPTE have asked the negotiators to drop the phaseout. The decision will be made by the outgoing Congress, before the new majorities are seated on January 3.

    Read the analysis

    Local 1776's full report, The Cost of Phasing Out the National Guard Dual Status Technician Program, and the spreadsheet behind it are available to any committee or staff office on request. Every figure in the model can be rerun with different assumptions.

    The one-page version for a meeting or a mailbox is ready to print.

    See all four handouts

    Where Congress stands

    The votes are closer than you think

    On December 11, 2025, a discharge petition forced a House vote on the Protect America's Workforce Act over the objection of House Republican leadership. It passed.

    The dome of the U.S. Capitol against a clear blue sky
    The U.S. Capitol. The new Congress is seated January 3, 2027.
    Democrats voting yesRepublicans voting yesVoting no
    54+Democratic seats in the next Senate, up from 47. Sixty are needed to end a filibuster
    250+Democratic seats in the next House, the largest majority since 2008. The new Congress is seated January 3, 2027
    290 + 67House and Senate votes needed to override a veto, which is why a spending bill is the faster road

    The window opens January 3

    Democrats will hold more than 250 House seats, their largest majority since 2008, and at least 54 seats in the Senate. That is a strong hand. It is not a supermajority. Ending a Senate filibuster takes 60 votes, and overriding a veto takes 290 in the House and 67 in the Senate.

    So the bill still needs Republicans. Twenty of them voted yes in the House in 2025. In the Senate, Lisa Murkowski is a cosponsor. Susan Collins, the other Republican cosponsor, lost her seat in November.

    What to ask for

    Pass the rewrite of Chapter 71 through the House early in the new Congress. Force a vote in the Senate. Put the funding bar on every spending bill and on the defense bill, which the president has to sign. Keep the full statute written, introduced and ready.

    A new executive order from a friendly president would not solve this. The next president could cancel it the same day. Long-term protection can only come from changing the law.

    Four men in suits standing in a Senate office in front of a wall of framed Rhode Island police and fire department patches
    Washington, 2024. From left: Leo Ganand, legislative director of Local 1776; Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee; Ben Banchs, business manager of Local 1776; and Jon Clark, senior counsel to the committee.
    Five men in suits, four seated on a stone bench and one standing, outside a government building in Washington
    A Local 1776 delegation on a lobbying trip to Washington around 2013. From left: Mark Hymel, Ben Banchs, Perry Berthelot and David Bouysou, with another member of the delegation at right. The local has been making this case to Congress for years.

    Tell your members of Congress

    Call the Capitol switchboard and ask for your representative and both of your senators.

    (202) 224-3121

    1. Bar any funding for Executive Orders 14251 and 14343 in the next spending bill.
    2. Sponsor a permanent rewrite of section 7103(b), so no president of either party can do this again.

    Not sure who represents you? Find your representative and your senators.

    Handouts for congressional offices

    Four one-page handouts to leave behind after a meeting. Each one prints on a single sheet of letter paper and carries a code that brings the reader back to this site.

    Handout 1 of 3

    The problem and the ask

    What one signature did to a million federal workers, the four numbers that matter, and the two things to ask Congress for.

    Handout 2 of 3

    The bill at a glance

    The seven issues in the federal bargaining law and how the Federal Workforce Bargaining Rights Protection Act closes each one.

    Handout 3 of 3

    Claims and the record

    The main arguments made against federal unions, each one set next to what the record shows.

    National Guard

    The technician phaseout

    What the fiscal 2027 defense bill does to National Guard technicians, what it costs and what to strike.

    Coming next in this section: look up how your own representative voted.

    Sources

    Where every number and quote comes from

    Every source has a number. The same number appears as a small raised figure in the text wherever that source is used. Click one and it brings you to its entry here.