Jan. 17 is the date when Prince William County teachers and staff will begin voting on whether to join the growing number of public-sector workers who have maneuvered through Virginia’s maze of collective bargaining ordinances.

Thirty-seven percent of U.S. workers employed by state and local governments belong to a union, compared to only 7% of private-sector employees, according to Gallup, Inc.’s 2021-22 Work and Education survey.

But for years, those statistics wouldn’t have included local government workers in Virginia, where collective bargaining had been paused in 1977 after a Virginia Supreme Court ruling stopped local governments from bargaining with their employees.

Then, in 2020, the newly Democrat-controlled General Assembly passed legislation empowering local governments to allow collective bargaining, while leaving them free to decide the specifics. House Bill 582 took effect in May 2021.

David Broder, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 512 Virginia, called the law “the most important piece of labor law reform” but said that “at the same time, it is the smallest of first steps. The legislature needs to realize that that patchwork system, that instability, is bad for Virginia. … Ordinances look different in every locality.”

Eric Paltell, an attorney with Maryland-based law firm Kollman & Saucier who is outside counsel for the Prince William School Board, called the law “an arcane process” that allows counties, cities, towns and school...

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