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A Quick Study of How Unions Help Workers Win a Voice on the Job
Fast Facts: The Union Difference
Union workers’ median weekly earnings are 28 percent higher than their nonunion counterparts.
While only 16 percent of nonunion workers have guaranteed pensions, fully 70 percent of union workers do.
86 percent of union workers’ jobs provide health insurance benefits, compared with only 59.5 percent of nonunion workers’ jobs. Only 2.5 percent of union workers are uninsured, compared with 15 percent of nonunion workers.
Median weekly wages for women union workers are 34 percent higher than nonunion women.
Median weekly wages for African American workers in unions are 29 percent higher than for nonunion African Americans; for Latinos, the difference is 59 percent; and for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, it is 11 percent.
Fast Facts: Working Women
In 2004, women in the United States were paid 76 cents for every dollar men received for comparable work.
African American women earn only 71 cents and Latinas 59 cents for every dollar men are paid. Asian Pacific American women earn 86 cents for every dollar men make.
Nationwide, working families lose $200 billion in income annually due to the wage gap between men and women.
If married women were paid the same as men in comparable jobs, their family incomes would rise by nearly 6 percent, and their families' poverty rates would fall from 2.1 percent to 0.8 percent.
If single working mothers earned as much as men in comparable jobs, their family incomes would increase by nearly 17 percent and their poverty rates would be cut in half, from 25.3 percent to 12.6 percent.
If single women earned as much as men in comparable jobs, their incomes would rise by 13.4 percent and their poverty rates would be reduced from 6.3 percent to 1 percent.
Half of all women with income from a pension in 2002 received less than $5,600 per year, compared with $10,340 per year for men.
Fast Facts: Health Care
Some 45 million Americans lack medical coverage.
Since 2000, more than 5 million Americans under age 65 lost their health insurance.
Total underinsured and uninsured in the United States: 61 million people.
While most Americans with health insurance rely on their employers for access to quality care, employers increasingly are shifting health care costs to workers who struggle to pay higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments.
More than eight in 10 of the non-elderly uninsured (83 percent) live in families where the head of the family works.
Health care spending rose 7.7 percent in 2003—following a 9.3 percent increase in 2002.
In 2003, one-quarter of seniors and 37 percent of the uninsured did not fill a prescription because of cost. Among the chronically ill, 35 percent failed to fill a prescription, changed their dosage or cut back on basic needs because of the high cost of prescription drugs.
Pharmaceutical spending increased by 11.5 percent annually between 2002 and 2003 and another 8.3 percent between 2003 and 2004.
From 2000 to 2004, the amount of annual health care premium employees pay for family coverage increased nearly 50 percent, from $1,619 to $2,412. The typical family health insurance policy cost $9,068 per year, with employers on average paying 73 percent and employees paying 27 percent.
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List of Events in U.S. Labor History
By Allen Lutins
Most citizens of the United States take for granted labor laws which protect them from the evils of unregulated industry. Perhaps the majority of those who argue for "free enterprise" and the removal of restrictions on capitalist corporations are unaware that over the course of this country's history, workers have fought and often died for protection from capitalist industry. In many instances, government troops were called out to crush strikes, at times firing on protesters. Presented below are a few of the many incidents in the (too often overlooked) tumultuous labor history of this country.
The History of Labor Day
Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."
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