Virginia is one of many states where working people are burdened with a misnamed “right to work” law, passed by an anti-union and racist General Assembly in 1947.
The term “right to work” was popularized by a white supremacist Texan, Vance Muse, who warned against the dangers of white and Black workers together working side by side. In opposing unionization, Muse saw a means of perpetuating Black subjugation while also keeping both Black and white wages down.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said the purpose of “right to work” is “to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.”
These laws don’t guarantee anyone the right to work. Instead they weaken labor unions by forbidding agreements requiring all workers who benefit from a union contract — through wage increases, health and retirement benefits, and paid vacations — to pay a share of the cost of union representation. That’s a matter of simple fairness.
But keeping that law in place wasn’t enough for our union-hating Sixth District Republican Congressman Ben Cline. In 2016, as a member of the Virginia General Assembly, he helped lead the effort to enshrine right-to-work-for-less in the Virginia Constitution by putting it on the November ballot that year.
Cline and his fellow Republicans in the General Assembly got a nasty surprise in the 2016 referendum. Not only did Virginians defeat the “right to work” amendment, but the amendment also...
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