Union Membership Benefits Women Workers

The Center for Economic and Policy Research has just issued a study, Unions and Upward Mobility for Women Workers, that demonstrates that unionization raises the wages of the typical woman worker by 11.2 percent compared to their non-union peers and increases the likelihood that a woman worker will have health insurance and a pension. The study notes that union membership results in health care and pension gains on par with the gains of a college education.

From the press release, the study

also shows that unionization strongly benefited women workers in otherwise low-wage occupations. Among women workers in the 15 lowest-paying occupations, union members earned 14 percent more than those workers who were not in unions. In the same low-wage occupations, unionized women were 26 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 23 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan than their non-union counterparts.

All of which led the author, John Schmitt a senior economist at the CEPR to conclude, "For women, joining a union makes as much sense as going to college . . . All else equal, joining a union raises a woman's wage as much as a full-year of college, and a union raises the chances a woman has health insurance by more than earning a four-year college degree."

This study adds an interesting dimension to the fair pay debate and suggests that legislation making it easier for workers to organize might go some distance to raising women's wages, particularly at the low end of the scale.

MM