unions have been a powerful voice for all working Americans
We know union members can build a better America because that is just what they have done at every crucial moment in our nation's history, from the days when the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia -- in Carpenters Hall.
As Harvard economists James Medoff and Richard Freeman wrote nearly twenty-five years ago:
"Unions reduce wage inequality, increase industrial democracy and often raise productivity
in the political sphere, unions are an important voice for some of society's weakest and most vulnerable groups, as well as for their own members."
In our nation's public life, unions have been a powerful voice for all working Americans for 150 years. In the 19th century, they won the 10-hour day and then the 8-hour day so that succeeding generations could spend time with their families. In the years before the Great Depression, the unions helped America abolish child labor, establish workmen's compensation and protect workers' health and safety on their jobs. During the Depression, union members helped to preserve democracy and restore prosperity by enacting a federal minimum wage, overtime pay and a 40-hour week, creating social security and unemployment insurance, and thereby proving that our political system could serve the interests of the great majority of people. Labor's victories were America's victories.
In the succeeding years, union members helped America keep its promise of "liberty and justice for all." With the visionary leadership of A. Philip Randolph, the Sleeping Car Porters were the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement from the fight for the Fair Employment Practices Commission to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington. Walter Reuther of the UAW was at Martin Luther King's side in 1963 at the March on Washington. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach declared that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not have passed but for the support and determination of the unions. And Dr. King gave his life supporting sanitation workers who walked off their jobs in Memphis to assert their human dignity. Union members led the fights for the Mine Safety Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, ERISA, and laws to protect migrant farm workers. The health care workers and nurses pushed for and won passage of the lastest improvement to our workplace safety laws in 2000, the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act.
Through all these efforts, and so many more, America's unions made the United States a fairer, more productive, and healthier society.
Unions build our democracy as well as our economy. Union members and their families are more likely to vote than the average American, and organizations from the Red Cross to United Way benefit from the disproportionate contributions and participation of union members.
Unions in the Workplace
In our workplaces, unions promote opportunity, security, and fundamental fairness.
Through training programs and requirements that job openings be posted and filled fairly, unions help working Americans enjoy a fair chance to get ahead.
Unions make sure that workers are rewarded for their years of service and have regular hours that allow them to plan ahead and spend time with their families.
Union employers are less likely to violate civil rights laws, less likely to violate minimum wage and overtime laws, and more likely to follow workplace safety standards. Twenty-eight percent of coal miners, for example, work in union mines. Yet from 2004 to 2006, only 14% of fatalities occurred in union mines. The odds of dying in a non-union mine were more than twice as great as in a union mine.
Unions ensure due process. In every state but Montana, employment is at will. Employers can fire employees for no reason or any reason, except those specifically proscribed by law, which usually pertain to race, religion, age, gender or ethnicity. Employees with no union to protect them can be fired on a whim, for complaining, for whistleblowing, for dressing wrong, because the foreman doesn't like them, or for their appearance. Unions, by contrast, almost always demand and win a right to due process and a requirement that the employer establish just cause before disciplining or terminating an employee. By insisting on just cause and due process, unions give their members the security to complain, to have input into how a business is operated, to challenge unsafe, unfair, unlawful, unproductive or wasteful practices and to recommend better alternatives.
In times of hardship, unions help hardworking people have access to the benefits that they have earned, such as unemployment insurance, worker's compensation, or Trade Adjustment Assistance. Unions often advocate on behalf of their members with government agencies when benefits are denied or delayed.
Of course, unions' most important contribution is making work pay and compensation more equitable.
When one compares workers whose experience, education, region, industry, occupation and marital status are comparable, those covered by a union agreement enjoy:
14.7% higher wages
28.2% greater likelihood of having employer-provided health insurance
53.9% greater likelihood of having pension coverage
14.3% more paid time off
The union wage premium varies by race, ethnicity and gender, but is large for every group:
Whites - 13.1%
Blacks - 20.3%
Hispanics - 21.9%
Asians - 16.7%
Men - 18.4%
Women - 10.5%
In unionized settings there is much less inequality since people doing similar work are similarly paid, race and gender differentials are less, occupation differentials are less, and the wages of front-line workers are closer to that of managerial workers. Unions also lessen inequality because they are more successful at raising the wages of those in the bottom 60% of the wage pool.
It is important to note that even non-union employees benefit from the presence of unions in their industry and area. Because of the so-called "threat effect," non-union employers give their employees higher wages and more generous benefits in order to prevent their own employees from organizing. The clearest example is the Japanese and German transplant auto factories, which for 25 years have paid UAW wages to their non-union employees, even in the rural deep South where wages are generally low, in order to keep them from unionizing. Now that they perceive the UAW as weakened, the transplants are beginning for the first time to pay lower wages - $10-$15 an hour less in some cases.
More generally, unions have raised the standard for most employers and the expectations of most employees by negotiating paid lunch breaks, health benefit coverage, paid vacations, paid sick days, and paid holidays, none of which (shamefully) is required by federal law.
Complete testimony:
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_efca_testimony_20070326
