Unions are playing an important role in the primary elections now underway.
Candidates for mayor and City Council in local elections across Virginia are eager to tell you about their labor endorsements. Service workers at city governments, universities and airports have created a new state council. And Richmond is becoming the centerpiece of labor organizing in this election cycle, says treasurer of the new state council, Lanoral Thomas.
"This cycle, we're coming together to elect a new mayor, as well as city council members," Thomas says. "And it is going to be extremely important that they believe in unions for all. That is a mandate."
Opponents of labor unions worry that a new state law allowing collective bargaining for employees of local governments has created a system that tilts in favor of labor.
"So many people just assume that because we’re a right-to-work state that we don't really have to worry about unions and union organizing," says Derrick Max at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. "I've even gone to people and said, ‘You really need to start speaking up on collective bargaining.’ And they're like, 'Wait, we’re a right-to-work state. We don't have anything to worry about.' They don't even know that the union movement is getting around the right-to-work issues and growing."
This year more than any other in recent memory, candidates are telling voters to look for the union label.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
