OPINION: Virginia and "Right-to-Work": Betrayal and Half-Measures in the Old Dominion
by Douglas Williams
Photocredit: Commonwealth of Virginia website
If you are a union member in Virginia, you watched last year’s General Assembly election returns with a sense of elation.
The historic nature of the victory—an all-Democratic sweep for the first time since 1991—and the presence of Democrats in the three statewide constitutional offices gave labor in the Commonwealth hope that there would be changes on the horizon. No one thought that Virginia was on the verge of becoming a post-revolutionary Glorious Workers’ Paradise, but there was excitement that we could rise from being at or near the bottom in state rankings for best places to work. That, perhaps, we could see some substantive policy changes that would make the lives of working-class Virginians a little easier.
It was a hope that was quickly dashed by the actions of Gov. Ralph Northam and the General Assembly.
--
The first major letdown was on Del. Lee Carter’s (D-Manassas) bill to repeal Virginia’s 1947 right-to-work law. The legislation would have made Virginia only the second state—after Indiana did so in 1965—to repeal right-to-work legislation through the legislative process. The fight over right-to-work in Virginia gained national attention, as people on both sides of the fight waited to see whether labor could pull off the impossible: reversing a decades-old right-to-work law in the South.
Supporters of labor were about to be profoundly disappointed.
After sailing through the Labor and Commerce Committee, the bill was then sent to the Appropriations Committee for “consideration of the bill’s fiscal impacts”. The bill would die after the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) stated that repeal of right-to-work would cost the Commonwealth anywhere between $9 and $25 million dollars a year due to lost investments. How did they come up with that number?
Well, as it turns out, they did a survey...of CEOs. You read that correctly. The VEDP asked the very people who are the most opposed to any advancement of labor rights whether they wanted an advancement of labor rights. The Democrats who control the Appropriations Committee then used that advice to kill an advancement of labor rights. Even a compromise bill that would have kept right-to-work, but required that non-members pay the cost of their union representation would not see the light of day.
But, hey, repealing right-to-work was always gonna be an uphill battle. Surely, the casual observer might have said to themselves, the fight for public-sector bargaining rights would be more of a slam dunk. Right?
--
In 1977, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled in Commonwealth of Virginia v. County Board of Arlington County that city and county school boards in Virginia could not engage in binding collective bargaining with teachers’ unions. While there were no laws on the books explicitly banning public-sector collective bargaining, the Supreme Court stated that “legislative intent” had made it clear over the preceding three decades that such labor-management relations were verboten.
There were repeated attempts to allow public-sector collective bargaining over the next sixteen years, but these were regularly rebuffed by the coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats that held sway in the General Assembly at the time. Most of the bills died in committee, while the ones that managed to get out of committee suffered a predictable death on the floor. Even bills that would have further restricted collective bargaining died as well, as the General Assembly seemed to want the maintenance of the status quo in labor-management relations.
In 1992, however, the push to codify a ban on public-sector collective bargaining got a major push. William Landsidle, the then-Comptroller of Virginia, decided to allow payroll deductions for state employee associations. The relevant party that would have been most affected at the time was the Virginia Governmental Employees Association (VGEA). The VGEA bylaws explicitly forbid an affiliation with any labor union, and states that they will never take state employees out on strike or engage in any kind of work stoppage. Given that, it would seem that payroll deduction for a voluntary and explicitly non-partisan lobby group for state employees should not raise any controversy.
And yet, it did. After an inquiry from Del. Joan Mumford (D-Blacksburg) on Landsidle’s authority to make such a regulatory change, then-Attorney General Mary Sue Terry issued an advisory opinion in her year-end Annual Report confirming the Comptroller’s authority over this matter. Terry stated that the lack of legislative guidance on this issue meant that regulatory power was a matter of “administrative discretion”. Terry’s opinion makes her anxieties about this change clear:
Based on the above, it is my opinion that the new policy described by the Comptroller in the policy memorandum seriously undermines the constitutional basis under which Virginia previously has denied voluntary state employee payroll dues deductions for labor unions.
Accordingly, it is further my opinion that, if the State permits payroll deduction of dues for VGEA and other employee associations as described in the policy memorandum, it will be very difficult to defend the denial of such a deduction for labor union dues. It is my considered judgment that the policy issues involved here are of such significance, and that maintaining the integrity of Virginia's right-to-work law and the rule established in Commonwealth v. Arlington County Bd. is so important, that this matter calls for a determination by the General Assembly of the proper policy of the Commonwealth.
The Democratic-controlled General Assembly took heed, and swiftly passed HB 1872/SB 962 in the next legislative session in 1993. Democratic Gov. Douglas Wilder signed the ban on March 29, 1993, to be made effective on July 1st of that year.
For 27 years, that is where Virginia stood with regards to collective bargaining in the public sector. It was a lonely place, as such a ban on all public employees existed in only two other states: North Carolina and South Carolina. But as the new General Assembly ramped up, there was hope for a change. The Democratic caucus looked far more diverse and was much more liberal than the caucus that put the ban in place. And on the backs of successful teachers’ strikes in West Virginia and Oklahoma, it seemed that Virginia’s time in the sun was approaching.
For public employees in the Commonwealth, however, it would indeed seem that the skies will remain darkened.
That is because moderates in the Senate Democratic caucus refused to sign on to any bill that would have required cities and counties to open up collective bargaining if they did not want to do so. With a minimal majority of 21-19 in the upper chamber, any Democratic defections would have likely killed the bill. In light of this fact, a compromise bill was introduced in the Senate and passed through to Gov. Northam on March 8th.
This bill did allow for public-sector collective bargaining, but limits it only to those cities and counties that have passed resolutions explicitly allowing for such negotiations to occur. While it would have been better than a blanket ban, it set up the potential for a divide between those counties and cities that have the resources to engage in collective bargaining and those who do not. Given that public agencies already use the purported lack of resources as a cudgel against workers seeking economic gains at the bargaining table, the legislation would have handed municipalities a ready-made argument to prevent workers from the right to negotiate fair wages and benefits.
But even that tepid bill was a bridge too far for the governor. On April 12th, using the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as the backdrop, Gov. Northam sent the collective bargaining bill back to the General Assembly with instructions to pass another bill that would delay its implementation until May 2021. Similar action was taken on a compromise bill that would have halted the rise in Virginia’s minimum wage at $12 an hour by 2023 pending a review by state agencies and a second vote to continue increasing the wage floor to $15 an hour by 2026.
The delay hurts for two big reasons. First, it allows anti-worker corporate forces to give lawmakers more pushback against changing Virginia’s labor laws through lobbying and advertising. Policymaking is not something that simply lies in stasis; the windows of opportunity to advance progressive changes through official means are constantly opening and closing. Gov. Northam just ensured that Dominion Power and the Commonwealth’s business lobby will have more time to make sure that the policy window on labor law remains closed.
The second reason is that Virginia’s legislature does not sit in session all year. This means that labor unions will have to fight for these policies alongside every other group seeking relief in a year where all of the constitutional offices and the House of Delegates will be up for election. It would seem unlikely that politicians will want to take actions that they perceive as being risky right before voters decide on their future employment in representative government, especially with the economic and political uncertainty that the current pandemic has introduced into our society.
Unfortunately, it seems that workers being paid what they are worth and forming unions to fight for that has been deemed risky by those who never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
--
Virginia’s teachers make over $9,000 less than the national average, with the average increase in pay between 2018 and 2019 managing only about half of the rate of inflation in that same period. When teachers band together to demand more from their school boards, they are often accused of putting their wallets before the children, regardless of the actual goals that the teachers are pursuing. Meanwhile, these people (who are often overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated) frequently dig into their own pockets to furnish school supplies for their students and in many parts of Virginia are often educating young people in inadequate and dilapidated facilities.
What does it say about our political leaders—both at the local and state levels—that they would see educators and other public sector employees as being so unworthy of the resources needed to do their jobs to the best of their ability? What does it say about our society that we would want our children to be educated by people who are barely making ends meet, with all the attendant stresses of such economic precarity? Why should public employees continue to give their votes to a party whose rhetorical solidarity continually fails to be matched by their substantive actions?
Imagine being a teacher in Warren County and showing up to a local government meeting where such a resolution is being debated. Imagine listening to the arguments against collective bargaining in a county where the entire board of supervisors and the head of the economic development authority ended up in jail over the embezzlement of $21 million from county coffers, an affair that included the suicide of the county sheriff. Imagine being told that county officials had time for millionaire fraudsters and failed land deals, but not the people who make up the backbone of our communities.
This is the world that the supposedly pro-labor Democratic majority in Richmond has wrought by failing to take a definitive stand for Virginia’s working class. Yes, we will organize. Yes, we will speak out in meetings across the Commonwealth. Yes, we will shout from the highest mountaintops that those who give so much should also be given the pay and benefits that they deserve. And, yes, we will work to end the political careers of those who oppose workers exercising their rights in the workplace.
But one would think that, a year on from a blackface scandal that nearly ended his time in the governor’s mansion, Ralph Northam could evince even the slightest bit of solidarity for public sector workers. Black workers are 30 percent more likely to be employed in the public sector than non-Black workers, with the higher-paid work found in our local, state, and national public agencies providing a path out of poverty for millions of Black people in the United States. Given this fact, one would think that this governor would seek to put a hard stamp of racial equality and justice for the working class on his thus-far checkered legacy on this front.
It would seem, however, that Gov. Northam is more likely to show you the proficiency of his Moonwalk than he is to provide meaningful relief to workers of any kind across the Commonwealth.
Douglas Williams is a third-generation organizer originally from Suffolk, VA. He is a PhD candidate at Wayne State University and works as a labor educator.