After a years-long campaign by unions, Virginia’s General Assembly passed legislation to extend collective bargaining rights to nearly half a million state, county, and municipal government employees.
Union recognition has been denied Virginia’s public employees since 1946 when the state legislature passed a joint resolution against public sector bargaining to defeat a Black hospital workers’ organizing drive at the University of Virginia. A 1977 state Supreme Court ruling affirmed the ban, which was later codified by legislation in 1993.
