OPINION:
While Virginia’s redistricting dominates the headlines, the state’s Democrats quietly lurch leftward on labor.
The Virginia General Assembly is advancing legislation to repeal the state ban on public sector collective bargaining. If signed into law by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, Virginia could accelerate union membership for more than 500,000 public sector workers and trigger collective bargaining fights across state and local government.
Public sector unions are entirely different from their private sector counterparts, which bargain with private companies. In the public sector, union officials negotiate with elected officials, who are often elected with union campaign contributions.
In 2024, government unions spent $915 million on politics, with more than 95% of donations going to Democrats. Over the past decade, teachers unions alone have funneled more than $1 billion to leftist candidates and causes.
When union officials lobby elected Virginia Democrats for more taxpayer-funded giveaways, they generally find willing partners, and the money will come from the taxpayers.
Taxpayers aren’t forced to fund higher minimum wages at McDonald’s or pay raises at Amazon. Union leadership doesn’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars to put corporate CEOs in power. Yet public sector unions spend big to elect the boss who is conflicted in collective bargaining with their campaign supporters.
When push comes to shove in bargaining, it is the taxpayer who is typically conned.
Although Virginia’s legislation would not allow government workers to strike (yet), Virginia voters should be on high alert. Even unions that are barred from striking can organize “sick day” walkouts to hold the government hostage. In police circles, it is called the “blue flu.”
Not surprisingly, even union officials and pro-union politicians have opposed public sector unionization in the past because of its pitfalls. To quote former AFL-CIO President George Meany, “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”
As President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, collective bargaining “cannot be transplanted into the public service.”
Rather than heeding these warnings, more than half the states allow collective bargaining for government workers. Unionized government workers are higher-paid and more difficult to fire.
States burdened by government union contracts are less adept at balancing budgets and avoiding debt, while quality of service suffers. Illinois is going broke because of public union pension debt totaling $144 billion.
Studies show teachers unions are associated with worse performance and weaker education. In Illinois, firing a bad teacher is virtually impossible, despite the fact that just one-third of the state’s eighth-graders are proficient in math or reading.
In California, terminating a single teacher can cost the government upward of $1 million while the union forces endless appeals. In New York, less than 0.001% of the state’s teachers are dismissed annually. Chronic ineffectiveness, excessive absence and even abuse are not necessarily grounds for dismissal, as incompetent teachers are routinely returned to classrooms even if an investigation is launched (which is unlikely).
Beyond the classroom, cities with unionized public transit incur higher operating costs than their nonunion neighbors. Consider New Jersey, where NJ Transit engineers’ salaries and benefits exceed passenger revenue by more than double. For every dollar NJ Transit spends on wages, it spends another 83 cents on fringe benefits (the private sector standard is 30 cents).
Meanwhile, NJ Transit is routinely ranked among the worst commuter rails in America.
By switching from union monopolies to private contracting, U.S. transit agencies could reduce bus operating costs by 30% with no reduction in service.
Yet that would require too much common sense.
The New York City Department of Sanitation’s trash collection costs about twice as much as private carters charge. Yet private carters perform better in recycling a larger share of their waste, more than 60% versus 15% for the department.
The ball is in Ms. Spanberger’s court. The self-proclaimed moderate can veto Big Labor’s power grab. Defending the interests of her constituents means prioritizing taxpayer interests over the unions that have donated millions of campaign dollars in exchange for future cooperation.
• Rick Berman is the president of RBB Strategies.
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