Spanberger insists she’s OK with collective bargaining in theory, just not in practice. To those ends, she sought to have the bill amended. Where the legislature’s bill required government agencies to bargain with their workers’ union once a majority of workers had voted to certify that union as their representative, Spanberger’s amendment merely permitted government agencies to bargain if they so chose, and unlike the legislature’s bill, her amendments also didn’t require even those government agencies that opted to grant workers bargaining rights to bargain over wages and working conditions. Her amendments also specifically denied bargaining rights to workers at the state’s Port Authority and its universities (faculty, staff, teaching and research assistants, as well as university hospital staff) and delayed applying the law to local governments until January 1, 2030—the day that Spanberger will be termed out of office.

In addition to the amendments she formally proposed, sources tell me that she also floated another one that would have required unions to win a majority of the votes of all the workers in the agency they sought to unionize, not just a majority of those who voted. That this is the substance of a new Florida law enacted at the insistence of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis apparently didn’t keep Spanberger’s people from testing this out with some Democratic legislators, who instantly shot it down. Nor were her people embarrassed by the fact that, like almost all American elected officials, Spanberger had won office with the backing of nowhere near a majority of all voting-age constituents. (The population of voting-age Virginians is roughly 6,930,000; when Spanberger was elected last November—with enough votes to defeat her opponent by a robust 15 percentage points—she won 1,976,857 votes, or just 28.5 percent of the total number of voting-age Virginians.)

She’s serving the ruling class by doing this. If you’re serving them you cannot simultaneously serve the working class and this is why a large portion of the working class feel like Democrats have abandoned them. And if both parties are going to allow those vultures to pick their pockets anyway, they’ll go with the genuine article over the half asser every time.

We talk “big tent” but there shouldn’t be any room in the tent for union busters. There’s a lot of people in this tent who shouldn’t be there. Democrats need to be more discerning. This should be a 100% working class party openly opposing oligarchs and owners. That’s an actual opposition to a party that only serves the rulers unequivocally and openly. You can’t play both sides of the fence.

Sick of this bullshit.

but thanks for shedding light on this. I hope she is getting a strong reaction from labor in her state.

& brush things like this to the side to complain about "populists", progressives, young people, or whatever etc.
Constantly watching people like Bill Maher broke their brains

More than a few are 3rd way revanchists.

You see the damage that a re-heated Blairite/Clintonian 3rd way stance has done over here in Europe with the shitshow that is Starmer's Labour government in the UK. We have a chance, unfortunately, of a PM Nigel Farage partly because of 'Bairite redux' fecklessness empowering the Reform thugs.

Starmer and his ilk would rather take brickbats to the Labour left than go back to a social democratic overall stance.

Then they whinge and moan when the lefties, BAME, and younger voters, after years of attacks, abuse, and neglect, bail on Labour. I myself have been a Labour member for a decade and a half (started out in Young Labour 15 years ago in 2011, when I was 14yo). I almost voted Green in the local elections nearly 3 weeks ago. My ward in west London is unfortunately solid Blue (the Tories, arrrf) at councillor level.

When she was in congress, she voted against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, was a regular on FAUX News (usually to attack other Dems) and campaigned against Black Lives Mattered.

Pathetic. Just fucking pathetic.

And plenty lining up to join in here.

Shocked.

No wonder some cynics think Democrats belong to the inauthentic opposition party…but that’s what you get with middle of the road “liberals”. Time for the building of unions, not creating barriers. She should know this, as she calls herself a Democrat. Geeezusss.