“Working people should be representing working people.”
Of the many candidates on the ballot across Virginia this fall, some have stronger ties to the labor movement and the fight for workers’ rights than others.
And that’s especially true for two candidates running in Northern Virginia.
Sonia Vásquez Luna
Sonia Vásquez Luna is the Democratic candidate running in the special election to represent Manassas in the Virginia House of Delegates.
Vásquez Luna is the business manager for a local union with the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), and she serves on the Manassas City Council.
After Vásquez Luna came to the US from El Salvador in 2001, she got a job cleaning offices. She worked for the federal minimum wage, which was around $5 an hour at the time, and didn’t get any benefits. Later, she heard that working under a union contract would get her better pay and became a member with LIUNA.
“I started working at the Pentagon as a cleaner,” Vásquez Luna said in an interview. “I actually used to clean the secretary of defense’s office.”
Now an elected official, Vásquez Luna said she was glad to see the General Assembly raise the minimum wage and pass legislation related to paid family and medical leave and paid sick time.
But like many in the labor movement, she was saddened to see Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) veto a public-sector collective bargaining bill. The legislation was a top priority for labor unions in Virginia and would have expanded collective bargaining rights to thousands of state and local employees. It passed out of the General Assembly this year, but Spanberger took issue with how the bill was written and blocked it from becoming law.
Vásquez Luna emphasized the need to keep the fight to get the legislation enacted going.
“When I organize workers, you know, a lot of times it’s not only about the money,” Vásquez Luna said. “It’s about respect. It’s about being seen, and it’s about having a job with dignity.”
Yasmin Shafiq
Like Vásquez Luna, Yasmin Shafiq fights for workers’ rights and is running for office.
Shafiq is running for the Herndon Town Council. She’s a Fairfax County worker and a member of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Virginia 512. Helping to negotiate a first union contract for her and her fellow Fairfax County workers was a powerful one, Shafiq said.
“Last summer was my firsthand learning experience of the importance of organizing and being politically aware, and working really hard to hammer out a contract for employees,” she said.
Shafiq said part of why she wanted to run for office was to make it more common for working people to be in power.
“Working people should be representing working people,” she said. “And more often than not, they’re not, and I don’t think that’s acceptable.”
The Herndon Town Council this month passed an ordinance to allow its police officers to engage in collective bargaining. Shafiq said she supported expanding that right to other Herndon employees.
“My hope and my plan is that whoever ends up on town council, that there will be enough of a majority to ensure that there is widespread support for collective bargaining,” Shafiq said.
