Those Who Hate Public Sector Unions Also Hate Democracy. It's Not a Coincidence.

In 1977, the Supreme Court of Virginia outlawed public sector bargaining in the state completely, gutting the power of all public sector unions. That persisted until 2020, when a law was signed under a Democratic trifecta in the statehouse allowing public sector bargaining in any municipality that passed a resolution calling for it. The Fairfax County School Board passed its resolution last year, and the door was open.

The first problem they faced was that there were two separate unions representing the county’s school workers. The two unions were not particularly fond of one another. But Leslie Houston, president of the NEA-affiliated Fairfax Education Association, and David Walrod, president of the AFT-affiliated Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, understood that pursuing collective bargaining separately would make their task involve twice as much work. They forged a personal working relationship and agreed to unite their organizing under one banner.

“We realized that we could have fought it out between ourselves, and we could have competed against each other,” Walrod tells In These Times. ​“And it would have taken years away, and it would have left workers in a worse condition waiting for us to figure ourselves out.”

The ability of competing unions to set aside their egos and work together is something that many union presidents could learn from. Next, the two unions divided the county’s 242 school work sites in half, and began organizing in earnest. Houston said her team, bolstered by dozens of organizers from around the country, worked seven days a week for eight weeks straight, speaking to uncertain workers about what collective bargaining would mean for them. By May 1, they had collected enough signed union cards to file for their election. And now, less than two months later, they have their union, and can turn their attention to contract negotiations.

The union covers two separate bargaining units: 16,000 teachers, and about 11,000 operational workers, including bus drivers, maintenance workers and others. Houston — whose uncle is a custodian, and whose aunt is a food service worker — says a key to winning the support of such a disparate group was to guarantee the operational workers that the teachers would not move ahead without them. That solidarity paid off.

“If we don’t have bus drivers, kids can’t get to school. If we don’t have custodians, teachers have to clean their classes. If we don’t have food service workers, then nobody is going to feed the kids. Do you see where I’m coming from?” Houston asks. ​“If these people start to rise up, and decide that we’re not doing it any more, then what’s going to happen? Do they really, really want some of this?”

“You can quote me on that,” she adds.

With the election behind them, the leaders of the newly-formed Fairfax Education Unions have begun to turn their eyes to the rest of the state of Virginia, where hundreds of thousands of other public employees await their own organizing drives. Walrod hopes to see a ​“ripple effect” from Fairfax spreading out to educators across the state. He is quick to point out that this doesn’t happen overnight — getting the collective bargaining ban overturned in the first place took more than a decade of hard political work, even with a supportive legislature and governor. But for the moment, the conditions are in place for a huge increase in public sector unionization in the state. (According to an internal AFT spreadsheet, the union has added just over 52,000 newly organized workers nationally since August 2022, with the Fairfax County workers making up more than half of that total.)

“I know every teacher wants to just stay in their classroom, and every teacher wants to make sure that they’re doing the best job for their kids that they can,” says Walrod. ​“But part of the reality is that anything you do has a basis in politics.” In order for teachers to be left alone to do their best in the classroom, in other words, their unions must have enough political power to protect them from the politicians.

The nascent success of public sector organizing in Virginia has different lessons for different states. In the hard red Deep South, where prospects of a friendly state legislature are dim, Virginia can at least serve as a showcase for how a state can change when teachers unions get significantly bigger. In more evenly divided states — like Florida, for example — Virginia offers a two-step path to reviving public sector labor power: as soon as Democrats get a toehold in the statehouse, make it a priority to roll back right wing restrictions on public unions, and then let organizing flourish enough to begin tilting the statewide balance of political power back towards workers. 

Republicans can scaremonger all they want, but this organizing will come with three guaranteed results: Better wages for state employees, better public services for state residents, and, in the long run, a slightly lower chance that a national presidential election could be thrown by the corrupt machinations of a determined one-party state legislature.

I often write harangues about the labor movement’s need to vastly increase new organizing in the private sector, where union density stands at an abysmal 6%. But we should not forget that America’s biggest public sector unions — particularly NEA, AFT and AFSCME — have enormous resources and are often the best positioned to pull off large-scale new organizing drives, as Fairfax County shows. Raising union density will have a healing effect on America’s sickly democracy. 

In the private sector, that effect is somewhat roundabout, flowing from the process of working people participating in democratic unions and seeing their material lives improved as a result. In the public sector, it is more direct: Public employees who are treated better will do their jobs better, the government will function better and piss off voters less, and stronger public unions can use their lobbying muscles to stand up to apocalyptic right wing visions of a fully privatized nation with no safety net.

What’s not to like? Organize everywhere, and worry about everything falling apart just a little bit less.