The Filibuster’s Most Devilish Trick For lawmakers who want to pay lip service to policies they don’t actually want to enact, the Senate’s Jim Crow relic provides a convenient alibi. Oliver Contreras/Getty Images On Monday, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the main character of the United States Senate, announced that he would co-sponsor one of the main items on the Democratic legislative agenda—the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill that would functionally end state right-to-work laws and make it easier for American workers to unionize. “Fifty percent of unions fail in their first year of organizing,” he said during an event with the National Press Club. “This legislation will level the playing field.”