A number of top defense companies, including Northrop Grumman [NOC], RTX [RTX], and L3Harris Technologies [LHX] have been mum on President Trump’s “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” executive order (EO) this week, but Lockheed Martin [LMT] on Thursday said that it would move to abide by the order.
The company pressed Defense Daily to include the full response below.
“Since our founding, Lockheed Martin’s mission has been to design and deliver superior weapons systems and security solutions to American and allied forces to deter armed conflict or win a war if necessary,” Lockheed Martin said. “Merit-based talent management programs and compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, contracts, and directives have always been central to this mission.”
“We are taking immediate action to ensure continued compliance and full alignment with Pres. Trump’s recent executive order,” the company said. “We will not have goals or incentives based on demographic representation or affirmative action plans. Additionally, our training offerings are compliant with Executive Order 13950 from Pres. Trump’s first administration. We will continue to help America and its allies achieve peace through strength by recruiting, retaining and promoting the best aerospace and defense talent in the world, with the only criteria being merit and performance.”
Tuesday’s EO stipulates that the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs cease “promoting diversity, holding federal contractors and subcontractors responsible for taking ‘affirmative action’; and allowing or encouraging federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin.”
In addition, Trump orders federal agencies “to excise references to DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] principles, under whatever name they may appear, from federal acquisition, contracting, grants, and financial assistance procedures to streamline those procedures, improve speed and efficiency, lower costs, and comply with civil-rights laws…Each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of $500 million or more, state and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion dollars.”
The executive order by Trump attempts to use the money cudgel to force companies to scrap their DEI/DEIA programs in order to continue to be eligible for federal contracts.
Such programs are a legacy of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s signing of Executive Order 112046 on Sept. 24, 1965–an EO on affirmative action for federal programs. Trump’s Tuesday EO gives federal contractors a 90-day grace period to scrap their compliance with Executive Order 112046.
“Rescinding the [Johnson] executive order doesn’t undo the regulations that flowed from that executive order,” David Berteau, president of the Professional Services Council, said on Thursday. “That’s a separate process that will take time.”
While proponents of ending DEI argue that race, gender, and disability should play no role in hiring decisions and that company DEI training programs have been a regulatory burden that has harmed employees and their morale, DEI defenders have said that promoting a diverse work force is a worthy goal that has often gone unmet.
“The federal government has the lowest gender and racial pay gaps of all employers, precisely because employment decisions are made based on one’s ability to do the work and not on where they went to school or who they supported in the last election,” Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement.
“Undoing these programs is just another way for Pres. Trump to undermine the merit-based civil service and turn federal hiring and firing decisions into loyalty tests,” he said. “Our nation’s military leaders have said that eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs within the Defense Department risks undermining military readiness.”
In addition, to hire the number of qualified employees required to do the span of Pentagon work, defense companies may have to recruit more women, minority members, disabled workers, and foreign workers. Such defense companies may also have to increase their pay scales from decades-old ones in which welders, for example, may make less than or on par with department store salesmen.