Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) In addition to the well-publicized races on the national, state, and local level in front of Virginians on Tuesday, they’ll also be confronted by a ballot question looking to make Virginia’s Right to Work law a part of the Constitution.
The Right to Work law, in effect since the 1940s, prohibits any employer or union from forcing a prospective employee to join a union in order to work. Some Republicans say the law has been under attack, while Democrats deny any attempts to alter or repeal it.
“We need to do things that are going to make it clear to businesses and employees that Virginia is open for business,” State Senator Mark Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) tells WMAL. “Every year, there are members of the General Assembly that introduce legislation that would water down our Right to Work laws.”
He says businesses need the certainty that the Right to Work law is here to stay by enshrining it in the Constitution. However, the effort is simply political grandstanding to Senate Minority Leader Dick Saslaw (D-Springfield).
“I’ve been (in the General Assembly) since 1976. There’s never been a single attempt legislatively to repeal it, alter it, or do anything else,” Saslaw tells WMAL. “Why not transfer the whole code? It’s about eight feet long. Put that in the Constitution, too. I mean, what are you going to do next? .08?” referring to the legal driving limit for blood alcohol content.
Saslaw maintains Virginia is much too lax in revising its State Constitution, doing so at a much more frequent rate than other states or the country.
“The U.S. Constitution since 1972 has been amended twice. We’ve amended ours somewhere between 75 and 100 times,” Saslaw says. “It’s absurd.”
The effort to put the law into the Constitution could be motivated by Virginia’s changing political tides, says political analyst Quentin Kidd of Christopher Newport University.
“People who support the Right to Work law worry that if Virginia’s legislature is taken over by Democrats, for example, that this may change,” Kidd says. “It’s easier to change the law than it is to change the Constitution.”
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