New Report Says Joining A Union Makes As Much Sense As Going To College

With the Employee Free Choice Act waiting in the wings of Congress for a vote in early 2009, there is no better time to study the idea of joining a union - especially if you are a woman, according to new report released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

The report, "Unions and Upward Mobility for Women Workers," found that unionized women workers earned, on average, 11.2 percent more than their non-union peers. In addition, women in unions were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan.

The findings in this report could be very meaningful to women during an economic downturn as stated on the SEIU blog:

"This is really quite important, especially in tough economic times. We need working people to have higher wages and better benefits to help get our economy going again. Now we have evidence that joining a union can be as helpful for women as going to college."

John Schmitt, a Senior Economist at CEPR and the author of the study said the following about the report:

"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."

The report analyzed data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), found that unionization raises the pay of women workers by almost $2.00 per hour. According to the report, women workers in unions were also 19 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, all the more significant, since women pay higher insurance premium rates than men. Women workers were also 26 percentage points more likely to have an employer-provided pension plan than women workers who were not in unions.

According to the study, unionization also 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.

At a time when the cost of a college education is higher than ever, few industries are accommodating their employees with salaries that cover for the actual cost of urban living or a bachelor's degree. It is encouraging to see that there is not a loss of opportunity for those seeing more options.