Virginia workers push for bargaining rights with session ending soon

It is still not clear if the final collective bargaining bill will include home health workers and higher education workers.

In a massive display of solidarity, a large crowd of home care workers, campus workers, teachers, electricians, and grocery store workers rallied in downtown Richmond on Wednesday evening in support of expanding collective bargaining rights. 

The energetic crowd urged state lawmakers and Gov. Abigail Spanberger to include home care workers and higher education workers in legislation to lift the state ban on collective bargaining for public workers. 

Both groups of workers got excluded in different versions of the legislation that is still being finalized in the General Assembly. 

Athena Jones, a Portsmouth home care worker, said that workers deserve a living wage, sick pay, and to labor in a system that represents them. She decried the hypocrisy of public university executives bringing home huge paychecks while campus workers struggle to afford groceries. 

“No longer will we expect poverty wages,” Jones said. 

Tim Gibson, president of the Virginia Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said campus workers rallied in support of university presidents under attack from the Trump administration and former Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Giving faculty collective bargaining rights would empower them more to continue to defend the integrity of Virginia’s public universities, Gibson said. 

“ If you care about public education and a university for all, you need to empower faculty and students,” Gibson said. “And nothing will empower us more to defend the integrity and independence of Virginia’s universities and colleges better than collective bargaining.”

State Sen. Creigh Deeds (D-Charlottesville) told Dogwood earlier in the day that he hoped to see higher education workers included in the final bill. State Del. Kathy Tran (D-Springfield), the patron of the House version of the bill, told Dogwood she did not have any updates despite the last day of session being on Saturday. 

Overhanging every bill is the contentious debate playing out over the budget legislation and how to handle data centers. 

Virginia Senate President L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) is taking a very public and populist stance, issuing post after post in support of ending a state tax exemption for data centers that could save nearly $1 billion in taxpayer funds. 

Spanberger and Democrats in the House of Delegates have not come around to the idea. If they can’t find a compromise in time, a special legislative session may be needed.

Richmond electrician Scott Durbin was among the workers rallying on Wednesday. He told Dogwood he didn’t know enough about the tax debate to comment, but he hoped lawmakers would expand collective bargaining rights because workers not having them was “criminal.”

“These folks need collective bargaining,” Durbin, a union member, said. “It’s the only fair thing. It’s the only way to have real justice. Plain and simple.”