Heciel Nieves Bonilla, News Editor
Gov. Abigail Spanberger proposed amendments to dilute the bill repealing Virginia’s ban on collective bargaining for public employees, drawing ire from unions and Democratic lawmakers.
The proposed changes would delay the bill’s implementation for local governments until 2030 and remove the ability for third-party mediators to force an agreement through a negotiation process.
Spanberger gave updates on her legislative priorities ranging from data centers to burying utility lines to collective bargaining during a virtual press call on April 14. She spent much of that time defending her decision to recommend delaying the parts of the collective bargaining bill’s implementation.
The governor argued that a Public Employee Relations Board, a state agency the bill would create by 2028 to govern the relationship between public unions and employers, should “lead by example” by only dealing with state workers for the first 18 months to ensure the process works.
“I think that lead time matters, because we’re going to have an entirely new process here in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Spanberger said. “Bringing in state and local employees across bargaining units, from law enforcement to local employees to teachers to firefighters across every locality in Virginia, for those who might choose to move forward, that is a lot to move all at once.”
Spanberger’s term in office ends in 2030, around the time local government employees would be allowed into the terms of the bill. She defended the correlation between the two, pointing out Virginia’s unique rule limiting governors to one consecutive term.
“But that doesn’t mean that just because I only have four years as governor that I need to rush things much, much faster,” Spanberger said. “It is about being methodical.”
Another of Spanberger’s amendments removes the possibility for “binding arbitration,” or the power for a third party to mandate an agreement when parties are at an impasse, in this case between an employer and public workers.
Spanberger’s version denies these parties the use of binding arbitration, instead giving such mediators the power to issue “findings of fact and a nonbinding award.”
The proposal had a tumultuous path through the state legislature, according to previous reports by The CT. The version of the legislation that reached Spanberger’s desk excluded many university workers, despite continued calls for their inclusion by state unions within and outside the education system, including the VCU chapter of the United Campus Workers of Virginia.
UCW-VA president Harry Szabo stated the revisions are disappointing and represent a weaker bill than the legislature’s version — which did not include many UCW members.
“Making city and county employees like teachers and firefighters wait another four years to have real collective bargaining rights statewide, until weeks before Spanberger is slated to leave office, is disappointing,” Szabo said. “Removing binding arbitration is disappointing. Weakening the [Public Employee Relations Board] is disappointing. Public workers in Virginia deserve better than this. Our union is urging the [General Assembly] to reject these amendments.”
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, told Virginia Dogwood he was similarly disappointed with the governor’s amendments, including rejecting the power they give the proposed board. Giving the role of defining the terms of collective bargaining to an executive arm and not the state code gives governors unfriendly to labor a “regulatory kill switch” against bargaining, Surovell said.
The General Assembly will reconvene on April 22 to consider Spanberger’s amendments.