County wants to opt out of federal labor laws

Just secede already, will ya?

The Board of Supervisors in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, has unanimously approved a resolution urging lawmakers to oppose pending congressional legislation designed to help workers.

They couldn't possibly be talking about the much-needed Employee Free Choice Act, could they? I ask this because Congress has sat on this bill for a year now - instead of passing it like they're supposed.

A county spokesman sniffed that Congress's bill would affect Virginia, "where you have right-to-work laws and collective bargaining is not allowed within the public sector." The interim county attorney whined that the bill means "we'd have to repeal our laws that currently say that you cannot engage in collective bargaining in the public sector."

Tough. If Congress's bill interferes with state laws that are unconstitutional, why is that a problem? It isn't.

It's already against federal law to prohibit public employees (or any other workers) from collective bargaining or joining a union. Yet Virginia has a clearly unconstitutional state law to defy this federal law outright.

I want to know if Virginia has been sued yet for banning public employees from unionization and collective bargaining.

Organized labor is often the only thing standing between corporate greed and the American family. It's hard to imagine a county's entire Board of Supervisors being hateful enough to defy a federal law that protects workers, but here we are.

I picture the Isle of Wight County Board of Snoopervisors as being made up of people like the smug exec at your workplace who responds to employees' complaints by telling them they have a "bad attitude."