Workers Want Unions

The following statistics represent the reality of our current working environment. Despite hostile employers, ineffective labor law enforcement, and an indifferent administration in Washington, many working Americans continue to support unions and seek the benefits, rights, dignity and protections that they guarantee.

• 40 million workers would willingly join a union today.

• 44 percent would join if elections were fairer.

Source: Richard Freeman and Joel Rogers, “What Workers Want,” ILR Press, 1999.

Workers Need Unions

In today’s global economy, American workers are finding that they have less purchasing power, spending more of their paycheck for energy needs and health care requirements; all this, against a grim backdrop of layoffs, outsourcing, trade deficits, pension failures, bankruptcy and ever-present corporate greed.

•  Workers have 5 percent Less purchasing power than they did 30 years ago.

•  CEOs earn 1,000 times more than an average worker.

Source: Jared Bernstein, Lawrence Mishel, and Chauna Brocht, “Any Way You Cut It: Income Inequality on the Rise Regardless of How It’s Measured,” EPI Briefing Paper, 2000.

Workers Benefit From Unions 

Statistics show that union members are consistently more likely to be covered by health care and retirement benefits than are their nonunion counterparts—and, in many cases, less likely to contribute payment into such plans. In addition, many Department of Labor reports indicate that union membership benefits women and minorities.

• Union Workers – Benefits

  • 75 percent of union workers have health benefits.

  • 69 percent of union workers have short-term disability coverage.

  • 82 Percent of union workers are protected by life insurance.

• Non-Union Workers – Benefits

  • 49 Percent of non-union workers have health benefits.

  • 30 Percent of non-union workers have short-term disability coverage.

  • 51 Percent of non-union workers are protected by life insurance.

Source: Lawrence Mishel with Walter Mathews, “How Unions Help All Workers,” EPI Briefing Paper, August 2003.

• Union Workers – Wages (By Group)

  • Union workers earn 27 percent more (median weekly wages) than nonunion workers.

  • Union women earn 33 percent more than nonunion women.

  • African-American union workers earn 35 percent more than their nonunion counterparts.

  • Latino union workers earn 51 percent more than nonunion counterparts.

  • Asian-American union workers earn 11 percent more than their nonunion counterparts.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment and Earnings, U.S. Department of Labor, January 2004.

Workers Under Attack

A report from Human Rights Watch (2000) exposed what most union organizers and advocates have always known: employers continue to aggressively fight the unionization of their workers. Fifty years ago, a few hundred workers faced employer retaliation; in 1969, the number was about 6000. However, over the past 15 years, some 20,000 workers have been either discriminated against or illegally fired each year for trying to join or form a union.

• 75 percent of employers hire anti-union labor consultants (union busters).

• 78 percent of employers hold mandatory “one-on-one” anti-union meetings.

• 92 percent of employers force workers to attend anti-union presentations.

• 52 percent of employers have threatened to inform the INS.

• 71 percent of employers threaten to shut down operations if workers vote for a union—in fact; only 1 percent actually does so!

• 25 percent of employers targeted for organizing have illegally fired at least one worker.

Source: Kate Bronfenbrenner, “Uneasy Terrain: The Impact of Capital Mobility on Workers, Wages and Union Organizing,”U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, 2000.

Take a quiz to test your own knowledge on employer interference by clicking on this link: http://edu.teamster.org/quizzes/empinterferencequiz.htm