From The Washington Post: Virginia Democrats could repeal right-to-work. It shows how America is changing.
By CHARLES LANE
Conservative Republicans took control of Wisconsin’s government in 2010 and wasted no time overhauling the state’s labor laws. Gov. Scott Walker’s signature measure, Act 10, adopted in 2011, strictly limited public-sector collective bargaining and ended the mandatory dues check-off for public employee unions.
In 2015, after Wisconsin reelected Walker and a GOP-majority legislature, the state dealt labor another blow by enacting a right-to-work law banning requirements that individual private-sector workers pay union dues or fees, even in otherwise unionized workplaces.
It was a major policy shift for a longtime stronghold of progressivism and unionism that in 1959 had adopted the nation’s first state law allowing public-sector workers to bargain collectively. After Act 10 passed, unions and their Democratic allies fought back with demonstrations, lawsuits and a recall attempt against Walker, but failed.