First-of-its-kind labor history timeline illustrates the history of worker power and worker suppression from the commonwealth’s founding to present day

As efforts to strengthen worker rights continue to gain steam across the country, a new timeline released by The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis (TCI) maps the visual history of worker organizing in Virginia and the efforts to suppress it.

This timeline, which builds on past TCI analysis on collective bargaining in Virginia, takes you through critical moments when working people in Virginia—united across ethnicity and age—fight for higher pay, improved working conditions, and better benefits. Since the commonwealth’s founding, workers have organized in the mines of Southwest Virginia, the shipyards in Newport News, Starbucks locations in Leesburg, hospitals in Charlottesville, textile factories in Danville, and more. The timeline map also shows how corporations and politicians, threatened by worker solidarity, have attempted to suppress these efforts in various, reactive ways. 

“Whether we are Black or white, young or old, from Abingdon to Arlington, people in Virginia work hard for their families and their future,” said Mel Borja, Worker Power Policy Analyst at The Commonwealth Institute. “Everyone deserves safe jobs, family-sustaining wages, and time to spend with their loved ones. Yet corporations and politicians have intentionally and relentlessly attacked working people’s right to join together to achieve these basic needs. This project shows that people who are advocating today to put power in workers’ hands are continuing a powerful tradition in Virginia — coming together so that we can win safer workplaces, higher wages, and better benefits for all our families.” 

As public-sector workers currently fight for the passage of collective bargaining ordinances in various localities and labor advocates seek to repeal such anti-union legislation as “right-to-work”, this resource map stands both as a unique historical record and blueprint for what is to come for workers fighting for a voice on the job.

The full timeline can be found at www.thecommonwealthinstitute.org. If you know of a labor history event from your own community that you would like to submit for possible inclusion, reach out to Mel Borja, TCI’s Worker Power Policy Analyst (mel@thecommonwealthinstitute.org).