SEARCH
Union Membership Means Mobility for Low-Wage Workers |
|
Wage workers make more when they are represented by a union: In 2006, the union difference was $833 a week for workers in unions compared with $642 a week for nonunion workers. And union membership makes a big impact in improving access to health care and retirement security. Now, a new report out today highlights how the impact of union representation substantially raises wages and benefits in low-wage jobs.
The report, Unions and Upward Mobility for Low-Wage Workers, by the Washington, D.C.-based think tanks, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and Inclusion, found that workers in 15 low-wage industries raised their wages, on average, about $1.75 per hour by joining a union. Union workers earned some 16 percent more than their non-union counterparts. Union workers in these same industries also were about 25 percentage points more likely to have health insurance or a pension plan.
John Schmitt, senior economist at CEPR, and one of the report’s authors writes:
Our findings contradict the widespread belief that low-wage jobs are incapable of providing decent pay and benefits. When workers have a voice at work, they can dramatically increase their wages and benefits, even in what are traditionally badly paying jobs.
Click here to learn more about the union difference.
The jobs in the study include cafeteria workers, child care workers, cooks, housekeeping cleaners, home care aides, janitors, ground maintenance workers, nurses’ aides and home-health aides, teachers’ assistants and security guards.
Policies to expand low-wage workers’ access to high-quality skills training and education will help some low-wage workers move into better jobs, the report says. But there are too many low-wage jobs—more than 40 million—for training and education alone to maintain and expand the middle class.
In addition to skills training and education, Unions and Upward Mobility says workers need policies that will:
- Enforce and enhance existing labor standards, including the minimum wage and other wage and hour standards.
- Establish new basic labor standards, such as minimum guarantees of paid vacation, sick pay and parental leave.
- Allow greater unionization to promote better pay, benefits and working conditions in existing low-wage jobs.
Or, as the report’s authors say in the introduction:
Our findings demonstrate that workers in low-wage occupations who are able to bargain collectively earn more and are more likely to have benefits associated with good jobs. We conclude that better protection of workers’ right to unionize would help improve the quality of low-wage jobs.
The report echoes one of the main conclusions of a special report by the Center for American Progress in April, which outlines 12 key steps for cutting poverty in half. One of the recommendations is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers freedom to decide for themselves, without employer interference, whether to form a union.
The U.S. House passed the bill, but Republican maneuvers in the Senate prevented a vote on the bill. Working families have vowed to make passage of the legislation a key issue in the 2008 elections.
2 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I agree that union membership provides a worker with health-care benefits. About 30 years ago, I started working part-time at Meijer, Inc. in Michigan. All Meijer employees had to join the union, United Food and Commercial Workers. Not only did we have health benefits, we had great job security too. There were no problems of illegal immigrants coming to take away your job and of China dumping cheap inferior goods on the US market.
Today, as a result of an overabundance of cheap and uneducated workforce outside the US, employers are constantly whining that they cannot compete or afford insurance for their employees.
Most companies, particularly large corporations, are not altruistic enough to care whether or not their employees have a decent wage or have the proper life benefits, such as health insurance. Therefore, it is only through unions which protect the workers by negotiations and arbitration that workers have a chance at decent wages and medical insurance. The fact that most companies are adamant about not having unions for their workers speak volumes about their concern for their employees. Every company, business, or corporation that employs more than a few people should be allowed to be unionized if the employees want it.