Virginia Democrats could repeal right-to-work. It shows how America is changing.
The drama in Wisconsin showed that the Republican Party had both bounced back from the party’s losses in 2008 and shifted further right in the process. The movement spread to other erstwhile pro-labor states such as Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky. Currently, 27 of the 50 states are right-to-work.
Now, the question is whether Virginia’s Democrats will use their new unified control over that once-red state to execute a Walker-like maneuver — in the opposite direction.
Many of the Democrats elected to the General Assembly in 2019 did so after promising to repeal the state’s right-to-work law, which has been on the books since 1947, when a GOP Congress, acting over President Harry S. Truman’s veto, allowed states to adopt such statutes. Unions that helped Democrats win this year are “very, very, very hopeful that repeal is on the horizon,” as state AFL-CIO spokeswoman Destiny LeVere told me.
Also in labor’s sights is a 1993 Virginia statute that codified a ban on collective bargaining in the public sector that the state supreme court had imposed in 1977. Virginia and North Carolina are the only two states with blanket prohibitions.
In short, one of the most anti-labor state legal regimes could become one of the most pro-labor, which could have national repercussions just as the policy change Walker and company pulled off in Wisconsin did.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/virginia-democrats-could-repeal-right-to-work-it-shows-how-america-is-changing/2019/11/18/87f97702-0a19-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html
