Statehouse beat: West Virginia GOP proves again they are anti-worker

Senators touted the bills as promoting workplace flexibility and meritocracy while soundly rejecting a series of amendments intended to retain workers’ rights.

Ironically, although purportedly promoting hiring and promotion based on merit, the Senate also rejected an amendment by Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, to retain a provision in current law that requires the state librarian to have a master’s degree in library science and at least three years management or administrative experience — measures of merit that are deleted in the adopted legislation.

Senate Government Organization Chairwoman Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, had the audacity to claim that eliminating those requirements would provide the flexibility needed to “find the very best individual for the job� — that is, if the very best individual happens to be someone with absolutely no experience in the field who instead has the right political connections.

Sen. Bill Hamilton, R-Upshur, warned that the legislation will be a return to the days before the state enacted civil service protections in 1961, when the election of a new governor meant wholesale firings of state employees in order to free up positions for patronage jobs, a time when state employees would rush to the county clerk’s office to change their voter registrations to the party of the governor-elect in hopes of preserving their jobs.

“This is moving us back 50-plus years, and I don’t want to see that, and neither do the employees of the state of West Virginia,� Hamilton told his colleagues to no avail — as the supposed party of the working class voted overwhelmingly to take away workers’ rights.

For years, state government jobs have paid less than equivalent private-sector employment, but provided benefits and job security that the private sector could not match.

However, over time, the benefits have deteriorated (like PEIA health insurance, which the Legislature failed to stabilize this session), and the legislative Republican supermajority is methodically eliminating job security by turning more and more state jobs into at-will positions.

Which makes the claims of doing this in the name of meritocracy ring hollow, giving qualified individuals less and less reason to consider working for the state.

During debate, proponents demeaned state workers by rehashing the old stereotype of civil service existing in order to protect scofflaws.

And, of course, that’s not the only bill intended to demean workers. Consider HB 3279, which will remove faculty, staff (and student) representatives as voting members of state university governing boards, a bill reportedly inspired by the failure of the West Virginia University Board of Governors to select House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, as the university’s next president.

Indeed, Delegate Clay Riley, R-Harrison, co-sponsor of the bill, didn’t shy away from expressing that intent, noting that in private business, employees do not have a say in selecting the company CEO.

On top of all that, the Legislature refused to do anything about one of the more pressing problems facing working families, the lack of accessibility and affordability of childcare in the state.

On a national level, Donald Trump’s insane obsession with huge tariffs and trade wars has already convinced some companies to cancel job-creating economic development projects in the U.S., caused a stock market plunge that has done great damage to retirement and college funds for many Americans, and ultimately will assure higher prices for consumer goods that will hit working class families the hardest.

And, as Forbes magazine reported this week in an article entitled, “Trump Pulls the Rug Out From Underneath West Virginia’s Coal Sector,� the tariffs stand to devastate West Virginia’s coal industry, with half of all state coal production being exported to other countries, including 6 million tons to China in 2024.

As I quoted West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton in my March 29 column, that would have an “immediate and adverse impact on coal production and employment in the state.�

Meanwhile, as the Gazette-Mail’s Mike Tony reported, West Virginia coal miners will pay the price for Trump administration decisions to pause enforcement of a rule to protect miners from deadly silica dust, and to cut staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, limiting the agency’s ability to focus on miners’ health and safety.

Trump’s actions harken back to the mine wars era, when miners were treated as interchangeable parts, and when one was killed or crippled in a mine accident, he would be replaced with no more consideration than given a broken piece of equipment.

All while Trump posed this week for a photo op with miners (many of whom turned out to be company management posing as miners), and signed largely ceremonial executive orders calling for increased coal production.

Why anyone would believe the GOP is the party of the working class is beyond me.

n n n

A phrase coined some 45 years ago was evoked in the Senate this week, as Sen. Garcia declared that “fat opossums move at midnight,� in light of an 11th hour attempt to resurrect a childhood vaccine exemption bill that House of Delegates rejected back on March 24, as delegates heeded constituent objections, as well as a statewide poll showing that a large majority of West Virginians opposed it.

Garcia was using a variation of the phrase coined by then-House Speaker Clyde See in the early 1980s that “fat opossums move late at night,� referring to the late-session practice of attempting to amend provisions of rejected bills into active bills, thus fattening them.

(And no, I wasn’t covering the Legislature back then.)

Fat opossums was bad policy back when See coined the phrase, and it is bad policy today.

The senator behind the resurrection of the childhood vaccine exemption bill, Senate Health Chairwoman Laura Wakim Chapman, R-Ohio, not only tried to defy the will of a sizable majority of West Virginians but had the nerve to claim it was a matter of “common sense.�

Not only that, but the resurrection was done in the most ham-fisted way, via a committee amendment injecting the vaccine exemption provisions into a bill that would simply require the Department of Health to amend its rules in order to add alpha-gal syndrome to the list of disease cases that must be reported to whatever’s left of the federal Centers for Disease Control (HB 2776).

(I had to fire up the Google machine to learn that the syndrome is a tick bite-induced allergy to red meat.)

The pertinent part of HB 2776 affects 29A-3-1 of State Code, the rule-making portion of the State Administrative Procedures Act, while the vaccine exemption provision addresses the Public Health section of State Code, 16-3-4, Prevention and Control of Communicable and Other Infectious Diseases.

I’m not a lawyer or a parliamentarian, but what exactly does prevention of communicable diseases have to do with administrative rule-making? That’s like saying an amendment giving legislative pay raises would be germane to a bill making Babydog the official state mascot on the grounds that Babydog had once visited the legislative chambers.

Ultimately, the vaccination exemption was pulled, not because it was bad public policy, or because of the likelihood it would be overturned in court. Instead, Chapman claimed, it was crushed by pressure from Big Pharma.

Who would have imagined that we’d live in a time when the Senate Health Committee would be chaired by a virulent anti-vaxer?

n n n

Finally, legislation to install four patriotic statues in locations around the state to commemorate the U.S. Semiquincentennial, and could have been the vehicle to resurrect legislation requiring the installation of statues of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison and Arthur Boreman in the upper rotunda of the state Capitol, necessitating removal of the existing Robert C. Byrd statue, stalled at the end of the regular session (HB 3304).

The bill was on the Senate Finance Committee agenda Wednesday (effectively the last day this session to get bills out of committee and to the floor), but was never taken up.

I suspect that, given an austere 2025-26 state budget, and the abject refusal of legislators to adequately fund vitally needed programs for the state, the idea of committing the state to spending upwards of $1 million to install four statues in the Capitol, and four others in locations around the state simply wasn’t palatable.

So Byrd stands triumphant — at least until the next time the Legislature is in session.