Opm directs agencies to move forward with ending federal collective-bargaining agreements
A Feb. 12 memo from the Office of Personnel Management urges agencies covered by President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive orders to proceed with terminating or modifying collective bargaining agreements. The opm guidance comes while litigation over the orders continues and after courts temporarily blocked implementation earlier.
Opm: Development details
OPM Director Scott Kupor issued a memo on Feb. 12 advising agencies and agency subdivisions subject to the president’s executive orders to move ahead with amending or fully canceling collective bargaining agreements. The memo instructs agencies to notify the federal unions that their agreements are being terminated and clarifies that employees and agency components not covered by the two executive orders may continue normal collective bargaining procedures.
The administration’s effort began with an initial executive order in March 2025 that invoked a narrow provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act allowing a president to suspend collective bargaining on national security grounds. A second executive order in August expanded the list of agencies and components affected. For months those orders were halted by a preliminary injunction; an appeals court in August granted the administration’s request to stay that injunction, after which some, but not all, agencies moved to cancel contracts.
Context and escalation
The White House actions have produced both legal and administrative friction. Federal unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, have filed suit challenging the orders and their implementation, alleging the moves are a form of retaliation against employees who exercised First Amendment rights. AFGE National President Everett Kelley framed the new OPM guidance as further evidence of those alleged unlawful actions and pledged continued legal challenge.
What makes this notable is the speed at which a single presidential directive, and its expansion, has altered agency practice: the memo unifies the administration’s posture across covered entities by directing them to act despite ongoing court fights, narrowing the window in which some agencies had paused implementation.
Immediate impact
The opm memo requires agencies subject to the orders to take concrete steps: terminate or modify collective bargaining agreements and issue notices to unions that contracts are ending. The practical effect is already visible in governmentwide workforce data updated through December 2025: just 38% of the federal workforce remains in a bargaining unit, while more than half of federal employees are now ineligible for union representation. That represents a sharp reversal from earlier in the year, when roughly 56% of employees were in bargaining units and about 30% were ineligible.
For employees and unions in the affected agencies, those changes reduce the scope of formal bargaining rights and press unions toward litigation or other responses. Agencies and employees outside the orders' coverage retain their status and may carry on collective bargaining unchanged.
Forward outlook
Administratively, the next steps are explicit: agencies covered by the March and August executive orders are to proceed with termination or modification of collective bargaining agreements and to notify unions of those actions, per the Feb. 12 memo. Legally, the dispute remains active—unions have ongoing litigation challenging the orders and the administration’s implementation strategy, and key court rulings have already shifted how agencies behaved in the past year.
The opm memo consolidates a federal push to end or curtail collective bargaining in specified agencies and sets a clear administrative timetable for action while the courts continue to resolve the underlying legal challenges.
