Virginia Lieutenant Gubernatorial Candidate Blasted For Anti-Employee Stance

Turning a blind eye to independent-minded employees, including many who are economically harmed by union monopoly bargaining, Big Labor politician Sean Perryman is pushing for repeal of Virginia’s Right to Work law. Image: Twitter

In an op-ed published by the Roanoke Times, Committee newsletter editor Stan Greer reports that 2021 lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Sean Perryman has joined the growing herd of Democrat politicians in the Old Dominion seeking to gain Big Labor’s enthusiastic backing by vowing to repeal the state’s 74-year-old Right to Work law.

Perryman’s commentary venemously denouncing this statute, which simply protects the individual employee’s freedom to join or financially support a union, or refuse to do either, appeared in the Washington Post on Christmas Day.

As Greer explains, Perryman’s efforts to justify his pro-forced unionism stance fall flat:

. . . Perryman makes no serious attempt to explain why it is okay to force employees to bankroll a union if they choose not to belong to it. As even pro-Big Labor coercion law professor Sheldon Leader has admitted, under so-called “exclusive” union bargaining, workers who don’t want a union are “often actually made worse off” than they were before.

The eminent late Pennsylvania law professor Clyde Summers strongly concurred, rejecting union-boss attempts to use monopoly bargaining as an excuse for forced union dues. Under union “exclusivity,” noted Summers, “Full-timers may bargain to limit the jobs of part-timers, seniority provisions may disadvantage younger workers, and wage increases of the low skilled may be at the expense of the highly skilled.”

Perryman wants to make it permissible for union bosses to pour salt in the wounds of Virginia workers who fare worse under Big Labor domination by extracting forced fees from them as well. That’s a morally bankrupt stance. It’s also a highly unpopular stance.

Elimination of Right to Work protections for unionized employees is obviously no way to improve Virginians’ living standards. Nationwide, the average cost of living-adjusted, after-tax income per household in the 27 Right to Work states last year was $64,572, roughly $4,300 higher than the average in the 23 states where workers can still be forced to pay fees to a union for the privilege of keeping their jobs.

 

Virginia’s cost of living-adjusted, after-tax average household income of $73,543 is the highest in the country, and roughly $13,300 higher than the combined average for forced-unionism states.

Instead of turning a blind eye to independent-minded employees who don’t want to have to bankroll a union just to keep their jobs, Perryman ought to reconsider his stance against Virginia’s Right to Work law.  There’s still plenty of time for him to change his mind and take back his Christmas gift to forced dues-hungry union bosses before Election Day!

The entire op-ed can be read here.