On September 3, 2026, Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma introduced a bill with a mild-sounding name and one blunt sentence in it.

The bill is called the No Preference Act. Here is what it would add to federal contracting law:

"The head of an executive agency may not require or give preference to an offeror on the basis of whether the offeror will use workers subject to a collective bargaining agreement."

Then it says the same thing again for the Pentagon.

That is the whole bill. Two sentences. It would make it illegal for any federal agency to treat a contractor better because that contractor's workers have a union contract.

Steve Womack of Arkansas signed on the same day as an original cosponsor. John Rutherford of Florida and Jack Bergman of Michigan added their names the next day.

What the rule they're trying to kill actually does

Big federal construction jobs — anything costing $35 million or more — currently have to use something called a project labor agreement, unless the agency can justify an exception. It is a contract, negotiated before the first shovel goes in the ground, that sets the pay and benefits for everybody who works on the site.

The Economic Policy Institute describes what those agreements contain: they "specify workers' wages and fringe benefits," they can set up a process for settling disputes on the job, and they typically bar strikes for the length of the project while also barring the employer from locking workers out.

In other words, the deal cuts both ways. The workers get a wage floor and benefits in writing. The government gets a job site that doesn't shut down.

Take the preference away and the wage floor goes with it. As EPI put it about a Pentagon attempt to do exactly this, workers on those projects "will no longer have the guarantee of negotiating PLAs that include higher pay."

Trump's own administration looked at this and said no

This is the part that ought to end the argument.

In February 2025 the Defense Department tried to stop using these agreements on its large construction projects. A federal judge blocked it in May. And on June 12, 2025, the White House Office of Management and Budget — Trump's own budget office, run by Russell Vought — issued a memo saying the requirement stays.

The memo called some agencies' moves to scrap the agreements "overly broad" and stated plainly that further attempts to prohibit them across the board "are precluded."

So the sitting Republican administration reviewed this exact policy and kept it. Bice, Womack, Rutherford and Bergman want Congress to override that.

What they say it's about

Bice frames it as fairness between states:

"Every qualified contractor deserves a fair opportunity to compete for federal projects. The government should not favor one individual over another simply because their workers are part of a union. This legislation ensures that right-to-work states, like Oklahoma, have an equal footing when competing for contracts."

Womack frames it as thrift:

"The playing field shouldn't be skewed toward contractors who choose to use union labor."

Neither of them mentions what the agreements guarantee the workers. That is the thing being removed, and it does not appear in either quote.

Who asked for this

The bill is backed by Associated Builders & Contractors and the Association of Oklahoma General Contractors.

Associated Builders and Contractors is the national trade group for non-union construction companies. Fighting project labor agreements is one of the things it exists to do. This is not a bill a contractor who lost a bid asked for. It is a bill the industry association whose members would collect the work is pushing.

The people on the other side of that transaction are the ones who currently have their wages written into the contract before they show up.

This keeps happening

The four names on this bill are not the only Republicans on this site pushing the same direction. Tom Tiffany has signed on to take right-to-work national, and he was the only member of the entire House who missed the vote on workers' right to organize. In Pennsylvania, the building trades council that endorsed Stacy Garrity in 2024 is now campaigning against her, and her campaign won't say whether she'd sign a right-to-work bill.

The No Preference Act is the federal-contracting version of the same fight. It doesn't ban unions. It just makes sure the government can never prefer the contractor who pays union scale — on a Pentagon base, a courthouse, a dam, or anything else the public is paying for.

What the bill says

Stephanie Bice wrote a two-sentence bill that would bar every federal agency, including the Defense Department, from giving any preference to a contractor whose workers have a union contract. Steve Womack, John Rutherford and Jack Bergman cosponsored it. It is backed by the national trade association for non-union builders. And it targets a rule that Trump's own Office of Management and Budget reviewed in June 2025 and expressly kept in force.

Sources

• Bice, Womack seek to eliminate union labor preferences in federal contracts, Ripon Advance (September 4, 2026).
• H.R. 10250, the No Preference Act — full text and cosponsor list, 119th Congress.
• Department of Defense orders end to project labor agreements, Economic Policy Institute Federal Policy Watch.