Unionization in Vermont Helps Lowest-Wage Workers Earn 21.3%
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May 16, 2008 09:30 PDT
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Report: Union Membership Helps Low-Wage Workers Move Up the
Ladder
By James Parks on AFL-CIO blog
Wages for low-income workers, such as food service employees, get a boost
when workers join a union.
A new report emphasizes
the importance of a union contract for workers at every level, especially
low-wage workers.
The report, [1]
The Union Advantage for Low-Wage Workers, released today by the
Center for Economic and Policy Research ([2]
<font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=3>
CEPR), shows that union membership boosted the wages of workers on
the bottom rung of the wage ladder (the 10th percentile) by 20.6 percent,
from 2003 to 2007. For a worker at the 20th percentile, who earns less
than 80 percent of the workforce, the boost from being a union member is
18.9 percent and for the average worker at the 30th percentile, the union
benefit is 16.8 percent.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says:
For millions of workers who work hard and take home less to show for
it, being part of a union that provides a say on the job is all the more
important. This study proves that for workers on the bottom rungs of the
pay scale, bargaining power is the best, and often only, means to gain a
leg up to the middle class.
While the effect was strongest for workers who earned less, the
study also showed that belonging to a union substantially raises the
wages for all workersincluding those whose earnings were in the middle
and top of the wage distribution. The typical workerthe earner right in
the middle of the national pay scalesaw his or her wages raised by 13.7
percent.
Figures in the CEPR report differ from the more frequently used numbers
by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (which show
a [3]
30 percent union wage
benefit) because the CEPR report controls for other worker
characteristics, including age, gender, location, education and
industry. But the bottom line is that no matter how you count it,
being a union member means better wages.
Economist John Schmitt, who
authored the report, sums it up this way:
Unions give the biggest boost to low-wage workers because these are
the workers that have the least bargaining power in the labor market.
Unionization has a large and measurable impact on the bargaining power,
and therefore the wages, of low-wage workers.
The CEPR report also analyzes the union difference in each of the 50
states and the District of Columbia. Across the board in every state,
union members earn more than nonunion members. Click [4]
here to read or download
the report.
Article printed from AFL-CIO NOW BLOG:
http://blog.aflcio.org
URL to article:
<a href="http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/05/15/report-union-membership-helps-low-wage-workers-move-up-the-ladder/" eudora="autourl">
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/05/15/report-union-membership-helps-low-wage-workers-move-up-the-ladder/
URLs in this post:
[1] The Union Advantage for Low-Wage Workers:
<a href="http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/quantile_2008_05.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/quantile_2008_05.pdf
[2] CEPR:
http://www.cepr.net/
[3] 30 percent union
wage benefit:
<a href="http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/why/uniondifference" eudora="autourl">
http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/why/uniondifference
[4] here:
<a href="http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/quantile_2008_05.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/quantile_2008_05.pdf
The Vermont facts by
percentage:
Union share = 12.5
Mean increase = 10.4
10th percentile 21.3
20th = 19.4
30th = 16.2
40th = 13.9
50th = 11.0
60th = 7.8
70th = 5.1
80th = 4.3
90th = -0.4
Conclusion
The most recently available
wage data --consistent with a large body of economic research-- show
a
strong effect of unionization on the wage of the average worker. On
average, a worker who is a
member of a union or represented by a union earns about 11.9 percent more
than a comparable
worker who is not unionized. The statistical analysis here, however, also
demonstrates that the union
effect is substantially larger for workers at the bottom of the income
distribution than it is for the
average worker. Unionization, for example, raises the wage of a typical
low-wage worker (one in the
10th percentile of the wage distribution) about 20.6 percent. Meanwhile,
unions have an important,
but smaller impact on higher-wage workers. For a high-wage worker (one in
the 90th percentile of
the wage distribution), unionization increases wages about 6.1 percent,
less than one third of the
impact for the typical low-wage worker.
as with the national-level results, across all the
separate states, the union wage premium is typically larger for
lower-wage workers than it is for
middle-wage workers, and larger for middle-wage workers than it is for
workers at the top of the
distribution.
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