Closing the door on “right-to-work” in Virginia
by Douglas Williams
Photocredit: Commonwealth of Virginia website
The South has always been seen as a place of implacable opposition to labor organizing and collective working-class struggle. Perhaps the biggest symbol of that opposition that endures are so-called “right-to-work” laws.
The first right-to-work laws were passed on November 7, 1944 via popular referendums in Florida and Arkansas. Labor leaders in Florida warned that a victory for racist reactionaries and big business in that state would kick off a major push to see these laws imported across the country. They were right: by the mid-1950s, most of the South had right-to-work laws on the books in their states. With the passage of these anti-worker laws in West Virginia and Kentucky in 2016 and 2017, respectively, every Southern state is now right-to-work.
Against that backdrop, perhaps it is no surprise that efforts to repeal these laws have been viewed as quixotic at best; dangerous to the financial health of the states in question at worst. Nikki Haley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, once told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren that
“There’s a reason South Carolina’s the new ‘it’ state. It’s because we’re a union buster.”
But in Virginia, there lies an opportunity to do the impossible.
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Democrats in Virginia won a historic victory in the 2019 elections for the General Assembly. Aided by federal judges who chose a map that reversed much of the gerrymandering that allowed Republicans to rack up large majorities in the House of Delegates, Democrats won control of every branch of state government for the first time since 1991.
Many of these Democrats were not of the same ilk of those who last ran the lower house of the General Assembly under long-serving Speaker A.L. Philpott. They included Ghazala Hashmi, the first Muslim elected to the General Assembly. There were more Black legislators elected as the new maps made many Republican districts more diverse. But that shift in terrain does not guarantee that unions and working people more generally will see legislation passed to strengthen protections for workers.
Unlike in other states and at other times, however, working people and labor unions have a very powerful political tool at their disposal.
The voice of the people.
That is because in 2016, Virginia held a referendum on whether to place the right-to-work law in the Constitution. This effort, led by business leaders and their Republican allies in the General Assembly, would have made repeal much more difficult. That is because, in order to repeal a constitutional amendment, the legislature has to pass a bill to put the amendment on the ballot in two consecutive legislative sessions. This requires a monumental effort on the part of legislators carrying a bill, as well as the groups supporting such a change in the Constitution.
The campaign as a whole was seen as a layup for the pro-right-to-work forces. So much so, that in a state once referred to as the “Cayman Islands for political action committees”, both sides combined only spent a combined $47,160.33 on the referendum. There was little expectation that labor and its allies would be able to defeat the referendum in a place that has been right-to-work since 1947.
When voters across Virginia woke up the next morning, however, the presidential election was not the only shock that they encountered: Question 1 had gone down in defeat by a 54 to 46 percent margin.
It failed in counties and independent cities across the Commonwealth, from Appalachia through historically conservative Southside Virginia, on up to the big cities in Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Northern Virginia. While it still left Virginia as a right-to-work state, it was a powerful message sent to politicians in Richmond: working-class politics ain’t dead, and we are still willing to fight against anyone that would threaten our quality of life.
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Even with these headwinds at their back, the labor movement and the politicians who support it will not find repeal to be easy.
While there has been some significant support for the repeal of right-to-work from inside the Democratic caucus, there has also been vociferous hostility. That opposition includes Gov. Ralph Northam, who currently presides over the worst state for workers’ rights in the United States. In a speech given to his Revenue Council – while flanked by the outgoing Republican Speaker Kirk Cox and the CEO of Dominion Energy – Northam discouraged the new Democratic majority in the General Assembly from repealing the right-to-work law, tying it to the Commonwealth’s AAA bond rating. The last two Democratic governors of Virginia, Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, also stopped short of calling for the law’s repeal.
In addition to that, pro-labor forces can expect, for lack of a better term, massive resistance from editorial boards across Virginia to this sea change in labor policy. Already there have been editorials in places like the Washington Post and the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star arguing the virtues of a policy that is specifically designed to destroy working-class solidarity and break the unions forging said collective action. One can reasonably expect other newspapers such as the conservative Richmond Times Dispatch to weigh in against any change that might benefit Virginia workers as well.
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Only one state has ever repealed a right-to-work law. Indiana’s Republican-dominated General Assembly passed a right-to-work law in 1957, which was then signed by Republican Gov. Harold Handley. The reaction to its passage was so strongly negative, however, that the Republicans were handily defeated in both the General Assembly elections in 1958 and the gubernatorial elections in 1960. The new all-Democratic legislature passed a repeal and newly-elected Gov. Matthew Welsh’s signature made the repeal official.
(Indiana would later go right-to-work in 2012, with the law withstanding legal challenges.)
Virginia has an opportunity to become the second. This has the potential to be the most consequential year for working people in the Commonwealth since the defeat of the Readjusters in 1883. With their fall, the balance of power shifted firmly into the hands of a reconstituted plantation gentry that would grind the working class of Virginia into dust for five decades, until the New Deal shifted that balance once more. This time, Virginia’s Democrats could potentially put power in the hands of working people for decades to come. It would be a monumental victory for the working class not only in the South, but across the United States.
It remains to be seen if they will take this opportunity.
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.