Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) has reportedly told Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) that she will veto a bill that would expand collective bargaining for public employees. It’s the right move for the governor’s constituents, and it has the added benefit of helping her reclaim the moderate image that got her elected.
Surovell told the Virginia publication Dogwood that Spanberger would veto the bill even though she supports collective bargaining in principle. Surovell found this “perplexing,” but he shouldn’t be confused after the way the legislature behaved.
After the General Assembly passed its bill, Spanberger returned it to them with suggested changes. Rather than work with her, they summarily rejected her changes and essentially dared Spanberger to veto the original. The governor called their bluff.
It’s no coincidence that this comes after she followed the legislature’s lead in its ill-conceived effort to redraw congressional districts to pick up four seats for Democrats, which Virginia’s Supreme Court struck down last week.
Standing up to government unions is never easy, especially for a Democrat. Yet Spanberger is wise to do so before they get a foothold. Virginia is one of only a few states that does not permit state government employees to collectively bargain.
If the bill is really about “treating our government workers with dignity,” as Surovell claims, then why not let General Assembly staffers collectively bargain? But legislators wrote an exemption into the bill so their own workers wouldn’t be able to unionize.
No part of this attempted power grab was on the up-and-up.
A 2021 law allows local government employees to collectively bargain if their employer opts in. Fewer than 20 of the commonwealth’s 500-plus local governments have done so. Even many Democratic jurisdictions don’t want to be forced to bargain with government unions, knowing that contracts weaken elected leaders’ control and impose budgetary demands that often require tax hikes. That’s what happened in Fairfax County after it chose to recognize a union.
House Minority Leader Terry G. Kilgore (R-Scott) said, “This veto doesn’t make life more affordable for Virginians, but it keeps the situation from getting worse.”
It can also represent a turning point in Spanberger’s governorship. She was elected in a landslide but has seen her approval rating collapse as she seemed to embrace left-wing proposals from the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. Giving away the store to government unions would have cemented that impression. Refusing to do so by vetoing this bill gives hope that the version of Spanberger so many people voted for in November is still in there.
After a strong Republican performance in the 2021 elections during President Joe Biden’s term, Spanberger, then in the House, cautioned against what she saw as a leftward lurch. “Nobody elected him to be FDR,” she said of Biden. “They elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”
Virginia voters weary of Trumpian chaos elected Spanberger to be normal, not usher in a new AFSCME-approved labor relations regime that would forever strain city and county budgets. Spanberger still has plenty of time left in her term to move closer to the center and remind Democratic legislators that she won a statewide election, and they did not.
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