This is a part of TCI’s “Collective Agenda for Virginia’s Future.” Click here to start at the beginning.
Everyone deserves safe jobs, family-sustaining wages, and time to spend with their loved ones.
By joining together in a union and putting power in workers’ hands, working people in Virginia can make sure that every one of us can care for our families, earn a fair return on our work, and make our voices heard and our rights respected.
But far too many people in Virginia are still living paycheck-to-paycheck while greedy corporations divide us, hoping that people in Virginia will look the other way while they steal the profits from our hard work. And the decline in unions since the late 1970s has contributed to substantial wage losses among working people, including those who do not belong to a union. Corporations and politicians, threatened by the solidarity of working people, have attempted to suppress efforts by working people to improve their lives.
What Can We Do?
We can transform the lives of Virginia workers by strengthening collective bargaining rights across the state. When workers can bargain together, we can win safer workplaces, higher wages, and better benefits for all our families — particularly for people who have been most harmed by the status quo. Even people who aren’t themselves union members receive wage boosts when many of their neighbors are in a union.
Advance Commonsense Policies
- Fix the state law to fully recognize the collective bargaining rights of local government and school board employees throughout the commonwealth and, in the meantime, support the passage of local collective bargaining ordinances in each locality and school division.
- Repeal the prohibition on collective bargaining for state employees.
- Repeal the often misunderstood Right-to-Work law, which erodes worker power.
Learn More & Engage
- Research labor organizing history in your area. Get started here.
- Support local unions of working people and their organizing campaigns.
- Learn more about how “Right-to-work” laws erode worker protections from Economic Policy Institute and share with your neighbors and friends.
- Contact your legislator to pass pro-worker legislation.
More within “Greater Economic Opportunity”:
Build an Economy that Works for All of Us
Raise the Minimum Wage
Advance Tax Policy that Helps Families Make Ends Meet
More from Collective Agenda:
Safe & Healthy Communities
Great Public Schools for Every Student