Virginia Dems defeat effort to add anti-union, ‘right to work’ policy to the state constitution

Republicans wanted to add the policy to Virginia’s state constitution even after voters rejected doing so in 2016.

Virginia Democrats successfully blocked a Republican anti-union measure this week. 

The Democratic-controlled Senate Privileges and Elections Committee killed along party lines on Tuesday a resolution to add “right to work” to the state constitution.

“Right to work” refers to laws in Virginia and other states that make it illegal to require workers to be members of a union, even workers who are nevertheless represented by a union. The effect of these laws is to severely weaken unions by depriving them of union dues. Unions use these dues to help negotiate contracts, offer workers legal services, and create strike funds to help support striking workers. 

Adding “right to work” to the state constitution would make it much harder to repeal the policy in Virginia. A similar effort was rejected by Virginia voters in 2016, but that did not stop Republicans from trying to advance it once again in 2025. 

Virginia Republicans, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin, have tried to argue that “right to work” is somehow pro-worker because it gives workers the choice of whether to be a member of a union or not. But, as Democratic Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy this week pointed out, that’s a bad faith argument debunked decades ago by none other than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, who in 1961 spoke out against “right to work.” 

“Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone,” King said. 

There is ample nonpartisan research backing up King’s argument. In 2023, the US Department of the Treasury released a report highlighting the evidence that, “unions serve to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy at large.” 

Still, Republicans and their billionaire allies continue to target unions as wealth inequality reaches record levels not seen, by some measures, since the Great Depression. At one point last year, the 10% wealthiest households owned 67% of total household wealth in the US; meanwhile, the bottom 50% held just 2.5% of the total household wealth in the US, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. 

Weakening unions with stronger “right to work” laws would only exacerbate this trend. 

“At a time when we are seeing the largest wealth income gap – where 99% of the wealth is accumulated in the top 1% – who’s speaking for the little guys?” Sen. Aaron Rouse said on Tuesday. “This is what unions do.”