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Women Bringing New
Strength to Unions
By Dick Meister
Women are well on
the way to overtaking men in the ranks of organized
labor—and for good reason. As a new study shows, women
who've joined unions have significantly better pay and
benefits than working women who have not joined.
Although only about
a fifth of women workers overall currently belong to
unions, they already make up about 45 percent of all
unionized workers. They're expected to become a majority
within a dozen years, according to the study by the
Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The study makes
clear the advantages of union membership that have
attracted increasing numbers of women. Unionized women,
for instance, average 11 percent or about $2 an hour
more than non-union women. Three-fourths of union women
have employer-financed health care benefits, but only
about half their non-union counterparts have those
benefits. Three-fourths of the unionized women have
pensions, less than half of those outside unions have
pensions.
Like other
unionized workers, they also can expect paid holidays
and vacations and premium pay for overtime work.
The union advantage
is particularly strong for women in lower-paid
occupations—food preparation workers, for example,
cashiers, stock clerks, child-care workers,
housekeepers, teaching assistants, security guards and
others. About 11 percent of them are in unions, with
median pay of $12 an hour. That's $3 an hour more than
non-union women holding such jobs There's an even
greater advantage in benefits for the lower-paid women.
About 60 percent of the lower paid women in unions have
health care benefits, only a little over 25 percent of
those who are not unionized. About 60 percent of the
unionized workers also have pensions, only about 20
percent of the non-union workers.
Despite women’s
growing presence—and influence—in unions, and despite
the 45-year-old federal Equal Pay Act, women in general
still lag considerably behind men in compensation.
Women in unions generally work under contracts that
guarantee them the same pay and benefits as men doing
the same work, one of the most important advantages that
unionized women enjoy.
Women who aren't in
unions often have no such guarantee, despite the law and
state laws like it. Overall, women currently average
only 77 cents in pay for every dollar earned by men.
That's a difference of more than 20 percent. If that
difference is to shrink, if sufficient pressure is to be
put on government to finally guarantee women the pay
equity that the law has long promised them, the pressure
will have to come from unions.
And the pressure to
get unions to act will have to come from women, as it
undoubtedly will as the number of unionized women
continues to grow. That growth is also crucial to the
revitalization of the labor movement, as is the new
growth in the number of younger unionists that was shown
in another recent study by the Center for Economic
Policy and Research.
As the economy has
been worsening, workers aged 18 to 29 have been turning
to unions, for the same reasons that more women in all
age groups have been joining unions. The average pay of
unionized young workers is more than 12 percent higher
than that of non-union workers of the same age. They are
twice as likely to have health care, three times as
likely to have pensions.
Some say that the
continuing increase in the number of women in unions
combined with the continuing increase in the number of
young members signals nothing less than a rebirth of
labor. And it could be. It could very well be.
Copyright (c) 2008
Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist who has
covered labor issues for a half-century. Contact him
through his website:
www.dickmeister.com .
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posted 6 December 2008 |
