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By Emile Schepers
The victory of Democrats in Virginia state legislative elections on Nov. 5 has opened the door to many new legislative struggles. The mood in organized labor and progressive political circles is decidedly upbeat. For unions and their members, labor law reform, and particularly the repeal of the state’s “right to work” law is the highest priority for the new legislative session that begins on Jan. 9.
The Democrats now have a majority of 21 seats to 19 for the Republicans in the Virginia Senate and 55 to 45 in the House of Delegates, the lower house of the General Assembly, or state legislature. This erases the former slender Republican majority. No Democrat in either house lost their seats, and many of the newly elected ones come from the progressive and pro-labor wings of the Democratic Party. And that’s raising hopes for an advance for labor rights.
Virginia has one of the worst labor records in the country. According to 2018 figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 4.3% of wage and salaried workers in the state belong to unions, compared to 11% and 9.9%in its neighbors, Maryland and the District of Columbia respectively. Public sector unions are denied collective bargaining rights, and the state minimum wage is the same as the very low federal one, only $7.25 per hour (with a scandalous $2.13 per hour for “tipped workers”).
Other problems stem from the resulting weakness of Virginia labor, such as the inability to get other kinds of progressive legislation passed, and indeed the Republican and right wing grip on power itself in many areas of the state.
Virginia is one of 28 states that have “right to work” laws on their statute books. These deceptively named laws are pushed by big business interests and the political right. They require unions to provide full services to all workers, including those who don’t pay union dues, in workplaces they represent, and they restrict the ability of unions to use the dues money of non-members for political purposes. This puts a big extra burden on unions, which is the purpose of these laws....
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