The Virginia House Committee on Labor and Commerce advanced collective bargaining legislation Tuesday that Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, warned will not have enough support to pass the Senate after the addition of a substitute.
Senate Bill 939, which was introduced by Saslaw, was intended to establish collective bargaining rights for local government employees if the local government passes an ordinance to permit collective bargaining. On Tuesday, the House Committee on Labor and Commerce conformed that legislation to the House’s version, House Bill 582, which would permit collective bargaining for state employees and local government employees. The substitute removes the opt-in language and replaces it with a mandate on local governments.
Both bills prohibit striking.
“Confident that Sen. Saslaw will be able to find more votes, I move we conform SB 939 to HB 582,” Del. Rip Sullivan, D-McLean, motioned in the committee. The motion passed, 13-9.
Saslaw told the committee it was difficult for him to get 21 votes in support of the legislation even with the local option and that removing the local option would cause some senators, including himself, to oppose the legislation.
“When I agreed to take this bill, and it was suggested to me by the firefighters, I agreed to limit it to this,” Saslaw told the committee. “I would be one of the switches on anything wider than this.”
The legislation was referred to the House Committee on Appropriations.
On Monday, the Senate Committee on Labor and Commerce took up the House’s version of the collective bargaining legislation and conformed it to Saslaw’s bill before voting to advance it.
Collective bargaining rights permit a union to have exclusive representation of all workers in a working unit even if some of the workers are not union members and don’t want their representation.
Several localities have warned that such a mandate would be expensive on the local governments and could force them to raise taxes. Some said that collective bargaining rights could lead to millions of dollars in additional costs.
