Posts tagged Virginia
Report: The diminishing power of teacher unions
May 29, 2026 // The result is A Crowded Table: Teacher Union Strength in 2026. Building on our original study, the authors set out to gauge teacher union strength in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.). Collectively, the 59 measures—which include 29 new measures that were not in the original report—seek to quantify union strength in five key areas: Resources and Membership; Involvement in Politics; Labor and Bargaining Policies; Policy Wins and Losses; and Perceived Influence, which draws from an original survey examining how stakeholders in each of the 50 states and D.C. perceive teacher union strength today. The states with the strongest teacher unions are Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Hawaii. The states with the weakest teacher unions are Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Mississippi. (See our interactive table on the report website for the overall rankings alongside the rankings for each of the five areas.)
Leadership of Norfolk teachers’ union ousted, president accused of misappropriating funds
May 26, 2026 // The documents outlined “the clearest example where Mackey and the executive board failed to exercise their fiduciary obligation to the membership” as a clothing allowance that was raised to $3,000 and stipends for hourly work despite holding a salary position. NFT officers had not been elected in a democratic manner, the decision and order read. Half the union’s executive board had been appointed. Its members, in a meeting, nominated one another for office. Hernández-Mats said only 16 of 1,100 dues-paying members participated in that union election. Many of these ranking members, she said, enabled the spending outlined in the report. Union budgets during that period, the documents read, included unreliable figures and displayed a lack of transparency.
Labor leaders call collective bargaining veto a ‘betrayal’ by Virginia governor
May 19, 2026 // “I remain committed to continuing to work with the General Assembly, unions, localities and public servants across the Commonwealth to develop a public sector collective bargaining system that works for Virginia,” Spanberger said in a statement. “However, I believe additional amendments are needed to the enrolled bill currently before me.” During the Jim Crow era, Virginia banned public sector collective bargaining in 1948 in response to a group of Black workers organizing a union at the University of Virginia hospital. Before Virginia passed a law that permits local governments to enact their own collective bargaining system in 2021, the state was one of only three that have blanket bans on collective bargaining for public sector workers. Even after the law passed, collective bargaining for state government workers remains illegal.
Spanberger vetoes bills allowing public employees to collectively bargain working conditions, wages
May 18, 2026 // Spanberger first sought amendments to Senate Bill 378 and House Bill 1263, which one of the bill’s carriers, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surrovell, D-Fairfax, characterized as “a total rewrite.” On Thursday, Surovell confirmed the governor told him in a private call she planned to veto the measure. The proposal, backed by the Virginia Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and various labor groups, would expand on a 2020 law that permits local government employees in Virginia to opt-in to collective bargaining if their localities allow it.
Building trades unions emerge as a key ally of tech giants in push for AI data centers
May 4, 2026 // Unions have aggressively answered complaints about data centers in ways that executives at tech giants and the development firms rarely do, unafraid to bluntly confront concerns about energy and water shortages, rising electric and water bills, or noise and quality-of-life objections. “When people say, you know, ‘data centers are the root of all evil,’ we’re just saying, ‘look, they do create a hell of a lot of construction jobs, which we live and work in your communities,'” said Rob Bair, president of the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council.
Commentary: Unions make slight gains in South, mirroring national trends
April 29, 2026 // Southern states continue to lag significantly behind the rest of the country in union membership. Close to 4.9 percent of workers in the South belong to a union, and 5.9 percent of workers are employed in a workplace that enjoys union representation. That compares to 12.7 percent union density in the rest of the country, and 14 percent of non-Southern workers having union representation at their workplace. Labor’s modest gains come amidst a wide-ranging assault on worker protections under the Trump administration. Since coming into office, Trump has sought to strip collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million federal workers and eviscerated worker health and safety protections.
How a $15 minimum wage will regionally affect a diverse and unequal Virginia
April 28, 2026 // The age-old economic debate over minimum wage has been a sticking point between Republicans and Democrats in the Old Dominion, as Youngkin called the $15 minimum wage proposal a "one-size-fits-all mandate" that "ignores the vast economic and geographic differences," in his veto memo last year. "Implementing an arbitrary $15-per-hour wage mandate may not impact Northern Virginia, where economic conditions lead to historically higher wages, but this approach is detrimental for small businesses across the rest of Virginia, especially in Southwest and Southside," Youngkin wrote.
Unions push back against Spanberger’s collective bargaining changes
April 23, 2026 // Spanberger’s term in office ends in 2030, around the time local government employees would be allowed into the terms of the bill. She defended the correlation between the two, pointing out Virginia’s unique rule limiting governors to one consecutive term. “But that doesn’t mean that just because I only have four years as governor that I need to rush things much, much faster,” Spanberger said. “It is about being methodical.”
Opinion: Unions are on a comeback. Americans are paying the price.
April 2, 2026 // So far, the union comeback has mostly been confined to courthouses and state legislatures. Membership hardly budged last year, rising from 9.9 percent of U.S. workers in 2024 to 10 percent in 2025. Yet if more states continue to mandate collective bargaining for public-sector workers — or decide to repeal right-to-work statutes for the private sector — rates can be expected to rise in those jurisdictions. If workers at a unionized shop are forced to pay dues regardless of their membership status, more will opt in as the financial incentive to remain unorganized slips away.
Op-ed: Local control in jeopardy if Virginia mandates collective bargaining
March 29, 2026 // Virginia used to prohibit collective bargaining for state and local employees. In 2021, Democrats changed the law to allow local governments to engage in collective bargaining. Fewer than 20 jurisdictions have chosen to do so, and it hasn’t gone well where it’s been tried. That’s why unions made this bill their top priority during the legislative session. It requires collective bargaining for wages, benefits and working conditions for state and local government employees.