Coalition forms to repeal VA Right to Work

Barely a month after labor helped Democrats flip the Assembly in Virginia, more than 100 union organizers, activists, elected officials and community leaders crowded into the Shirlington Busboys and Poets Thursday night to form a coalition to repeal Virginia’s Right to Work law. State Assembly delegates Lee Carter and Ibraheem S. Samirah and local electeds Mo Seifeldein (Alexandria), Rodney Lusk (Fairfax) and Kenny Boddye (Prince William) “all voiced full support for repealing this anti-worker law,” said NoVA Labor president Virginia Diamond. They also discussed the racist origins of Virginia's Right to Work provision, which was enacted at the height of the Jim Crow era in 1947 and pushed by an avowed racist and white supremacist who was the chief lobbyist for the bill. “Virginia should bury this part of its past and join other blue states to protect one of our most important rights, the right to organize and collectively bargain,” Diamond added.

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