CHARLESTON – Dealing blows to organized labor, West Virginia’s Republican-led Legislature cleared proposals Thursday to repeal the state’s prevailing wage for public construction jobs and make the Mountain State the 26th with a right-to-work law.

As union workers looked on, the House of Delegates debated right to work for about five hours before a 54-46 vote. Several Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the bill; some siding with unions, others making libertarian arguments.

“The only bipartisanship in this bill was in the opposition to it,” said Delegate Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio.

A few hours earlier, state senators cast a party-line 18-16 vote on a bill to nix government-set wages for a variety of workers on public construction projects, from plumbers to electricians.

Both bills passed the opposite chamber in similar partisan votes.

The prevailing wage repeal heads right to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, and right to work will likely follow suit after a procedural Senate vote. The Democrat will likely veto both.

However, Republicans need only a simple majority vote in both chambers to render his veto moot.

In an election year, Republicans painted both bills as part of a new path for a state that is shedding coal jobs, struggling with drug addiction and unemployment and hemorrhaging population. The two bills are top priorities of a Republican leadership that last year took charge of the Legislature for the first time in more than eight decades.

“We’ve done this the wrong way for too many years, over 50 years. It’s wrong!” Sen. Greg Boso, R-Nicholas, said about the prevailing wage.

Democrats considered both measures assaults on the working class – and specifically unions – that could lower worker pay. After the right-to-work vote, union workers in the stands shouted, “We’ll remember in November.”

“It was the labor movement that gave us the middle class, and we’re sitting here today thinking about kicking them in the teeth,” Delegate Mike Caputo, D-Marion, said during the right-to-work debate.

The right-to-work bill prohibits companies from requiring employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment. Unions are still required to represent every worker – which Fluharty called a “free rider” system.

“You will reap the benefits of exclusive representation without paying into it,” he said. “That’s like not paying for car insurance and expecting the car insurance company to represent you after an accident.”

Conservative groups, including the Americans for Prosperity funded by the wealthy industrialist Koch brothers, have peppered mailboxes, webpages and TV airwaves with ads promoting right to work. Unions have countered with their own media buys in opposition.

Democrats said right to work was part of a national push to undermine unions without providing any clear economic benefit, since workers could enjoy union representation without paying for it. Studies have shown varying economic results in right-to-work states, but they generally agree union membership drops.

Republicans contended that workers deserve the right to choose if they have to contribute to unions.

Among Republicans who broke with party leadership in opposing right to work were Delegates Pat McGeehan of Hancock County and Erikka Storch of Ohio County. McGeehan said the bill went beyond giving workers the right to choose whether to join a union, but also makes it criminal for labor organizations to engage in certain contracts with private employers.

“What’s disturbing to me is that many in the Legislature did not even bother reading the bill. Even though I think unions have coercive power, I can’t personally vote for something that’s going to prohibit” free contract law,” McGeehan said.

Storch said despite her party’s support of right-to-work legislation, she heard a great deal of opposition from constituents.

“I had a large outpouring of contractors, business owners and labor individuals in our area that contacted me, and all seemed to oppose it. … I wish we were focusing on things like our roads and how to better utilize the money we’re putting into public education,” she said.

Tomblin promised a veto in a news release afterward, saying West Virginia should instead be “strengthening our workforce, combatting substance abuse and creating new sites for development.”

On the prevailing wage repeal, Republicans soured on a compromise they struck with the Tomblin administration last year to change how to calculate the pay levels. The wage level is for both union and non-union contracts.

They believe the administration barely changed the wages, which many Republicans consider inflated. Tomblin’s office says the compromise was a reasonable one with accurate wages. The tussle also resulted in a short lapse where the state had no prevailing wage.

Last year’s bill also eliminated the prevailing wage for projects costing $500,000 or less. Federal projects, including most highway work, are subject to a separate federal prevailing wage.

This week, Republicans killed Democratic pushes to use the federal prevailing wage instead, give preference to in-state workers and further study how the repeal would affect the state’s already troubling finances.

On Thursday, Democrats worried the repeal wouldn’t actually save money, as Republicans contended it would. Democrats also were concerned it would drive contracts to out-of-state firms with cheap labor.

Fluharty, who voted against the bill when it passed in the House on Jan. 27, said he heard from many small business owners and workers who were against the bill.

“Who’s really driving these bills? I tend to think it’s out of state interests. … This is not an agenda that the people of West Virginia want,” he said.