On Friday, I had the privilege to present some of my thoughts on labor and the media at the Virginia AFL-CIO’s annual convention at the Williamsburg Lodge.

I want to thank the Virginia AFL-CIO for letting me into their house, so to speak, and everyone I got to chat with afterward.

I met Chuck Simpson, the president of the Communications Workers of America Local 2204 in Salem. He’s helping to organize a Labor Day parade in Roanoke on Saturday, Sept. 5. (Feel free to send me your events, and I’ll do my best to mention them).

As I said on Friday, there is a huge gap in labor coverage here in Virginia, and the goal of this newsletter is to try to fill it. No one newsletter can fill that gap entirely, but I do think we’re making it smaller.

Below, I share more about the new worker protection unit that Attorney General Jay Jones announced last week.

And, a few thoughts on seeing The Odyssey.

Want to get in touch, or have stories you want me to cover? Reply to this email or reach out to me directly at michaeloconnor@couriernewsroom.com.

Michael O’Connor

Reporter, Dogwood

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones announces his office’s new worker protection unit in a speech on Aug. 14, 2026 at the Virginia AFL-CIO’s annual convention in Williamsburg. (Photo courtesy of the Office of the Virginia Attorney General)

I woke up Friday morning in Williamsburg, where the Virginia AFL-CIO held its annual convention.

The big news to come out of the convention was Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones announcing the creation of a new worker protection unit in his office to add more teeth to the enforcement of Virginia’s labor laws.

“I am not here this morning to give you guys bullshit platitudes,” Jones said in his spicy remarks, which were peppered with applause from local union leaders at the convention. “I’m not here to make promises that I can’t or won’t keep.”

Jones said this new unit will focus on things like wage theft, unpaid wages, worker misclassification, and retaliation.

Fair to say the laws in this country and Virginia generally favor wealthy and corporate interests over those of working people and the labor unions who represent them.

So the prospect of Virginia dedicating more resources to actually enforcing its labor laws is, in the words of Doris Crouse-Mays, president of the Virginia AFL-CIO, “a huge win.”

“A stronger Virginia starts with workers who are respected, protected, and paid what they’re owed,” Crouse-Mays said in a statement to me. “It’s good economic policy for the Commonwealth.”

Jones is a former dues-paying member of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1403. According to him, he’s the first former union member to serve as Virginia attorney general.

“That is more than just a line in my biography to me,” Jones said on Friday. “It tells you where I come from, what I believe, and whose side I’m on.”

The confirmation of a third Republican to the National Labor Relations Board is raising fears that the board will begin overturning pro-worker decisions made during the Biden administration.

The Georgia conference of the American Association of University Professors and its partners in states across the South, including Virginia, are conducting a survey.

Here’s Seth Goldstein’s labor take on the Trump administration’s dismissal of concerns about conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln: “Management denies the problem. It calls the workers liars. It attacks anyone who speaks. Then it conducts an investigation that it controls and announces that management did nothing wrong.”

A Dominion Energy lineman lifts himself up to work on a power line in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in North Augusta, S.C. (AP Photo/Artie Walker Jr., File)

A crowd of people rallied in downtown Richmond this afternoon in opposition to the proposed $67 billion merger between Dominion Energy and NextEra Energy.

“If this merger goes through, one company controls more of Virginia’s energy future than ever before,” according to organizers of the rally. “Families could see higher costs, less accountability, and a utility answering to Wall Street instead of Virginia customers.”

As these people took to the streets, news broke that the chair of the State Corporation Commission (SCC), which will decide whether the merger gets approved, pushed back on calls for her to recuse herself over her previous work as an attorney for NextEra.

“As has been demonstrated by long-standing historical Commissioner practice, mere work history with a regulated entity has not served as a categorical basis requiring recusal,” SCC Chair Kelsey Bagot said in a letter to Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell.

Bagot’s refusal here drew immediate pushback of its own.

“As much as I respect her decision, I fully disagree with it,” said state Sen. Michael Jones (D-Richmond) in a press release this afternoon. “Given her previous role with NextEra, I believe there is a clear concern about a conflict of interest. At the very least, to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and protect the public’s trust in this process, she should recuse herself.”

(TIFF/YouTube)

Forget the culture war debates and the academic takedowns: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is excellent and you should do everything in your power to go see it.

Yes, seeing it in IMAX at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly was amazing. But even if you don’t see it until it comes out on streaming, it will be worth the wait.

It’s an action-packed spectacle that probes some of the most fundamental questions of all time: What do we owe to strangers in need of our help? Where to draw the line between the victors and losers of a war? What, in the end, makes life worth living?

I could go on, but I’ll leave you with this: It’s rare that I leave a movie theater and want to turn right around and rewatch what I just saw.

But that’s how I felt walking out of The Odyssey in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday.