Unions Increase Wages of Service Workers
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After decades of disappointing wage growth for U.S. workers, a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shows that joining a union significantly boosts the wages of service-sector workers.
The report, “Unions and Upward Mobility for Service-Sector Employees,” shows that union membership raises the wages of the average service-sector worker by 10.1 percent, or about $2 per hour. According to the report, 13.3 percent of service-sector workers were either members of unions or covered by union contracts at their workplace in the 2004-2007 period. Click here to read the report.
On average, joining a union increases by 19 percentage points the likelihood that a service-sector worker will have employer-provided health insurance. Also, unionized service-sector workers were 25 percentage points more likely to have pensions than their nonunion peers.
