Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell says Gov. Abigail Spanberger told him Wednesday that she plans to veto legislation to expand collective bargaining rights to hundreds of thousands of public employees.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger plans to veto legislation to expand collective bargaining rights to hundreds of thousands of public employees in Virginia.
Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell and a sponsor of the legislation said Spanberger told him Wednesday that she planned to veto the legislation. He said Spanberger said she supported collective bargaining, but not the way it would be implemented in the legislation before her.
Surovell called Spanberger’s decision to block the expansion of collective bargaining “disappointing” and “perplexing.”
“The existing ban on collective bargaining for state and local workers—it has its roots in Byrd Machine-era conspiracies about Jews, Marxists and the NAACP,” Surovell said. “And I think we’ve kind of moved beyond those issues to treating our government workers with dignity.”
Spanberger’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The General Assembly rejected substantial changes that Spanberger proposed to the bill that labor unions said weakened the legislation.
Surovell cited concerns from local governments about the bill as likely reasons Spanberger vetoed the legislation. But it’s not uncommon for local governments to raise issues about bills and it’s important to weed out legitimate concerns from the “typical complaining,” he said.
Over a dozen Virginia localities have adopted measures to allow collective bargaining for local public employees.
“It’s not that difficult if you want to do it,” Surovell said of collective bargaining. “But we have 420 local governments in the state and a lot of the small ones don’t want to be bothered with having to talk to their workers about how to treat them.”
