The best thing women could do to counteract pay inequality might be to join a union.

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.campusprogress.org/fieldreport/3843/union-jane

By Jake Blumgart
April 2, 2009

Union members marched to the White House and encouraged Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to secure workers’ rights. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act justly received a lot of media attention in January, briefly refocusing our national attention on the gender discrepancies that still haunt our workplaces. But now that the issue has faded from the national conciseness, women are still paid less than their male counterparts (just 78 cents to the dollar). Women are disproportionately represented in low-paying jobs. Two-thirds of minimum wage workers and approximately 90 percent jobholders that earn $15,000 a year are women, according to labor studies professor Dorothy Cobble.


Union members marched to the White House and encouraged Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to secure workers’ rights. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Unions are essential to redressing these disparities, particularly for those working low-paid jobs and supporting families. Unionization assuages one of the most flagrant inequalities between the sexes, unequal pay. According to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), unionized women earn $2 more per hour than their non-affiliated counterparts. And in low-wage occupations, the benefits are even greater: “In the 15 lowest-paying occupations, union members earned 14 percent more than those workers who were not in unions,” the study said. For these women, unionization and the benefits it brings can make a big difference.

"For women, joining a union makes as much sense as going to college," said the study’s author, John Schmitt, in a press release. "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."

Health insurance is just one of the benefits unions can provide for working women. One job benefit the CEPR study didn’t take into account was family and sick leave. Many women are still expected to shoulder an unequal burden in terms of home, family, and child care, but cannot afford to take time off from work to care for a sickly child or look after an ailing relative. Sometimes, these women must choose between the health of their family and paying the rent.

In the AFL-CIO’s 2006 “Ask A Working Woman Survey”, a staggering two-thirds of women reported a complete lack of family leave benefits. The 2008 survey found that because the burden of family care falls disproportionately on women, those workers who were lucky enough to have paid sick leave would often use their time to care for family members rather than themselves. Nearly 76 percent of low income workers have no paid sick leave and don’t even have that option.

FULL story at link.

[Hello_Kitty]

1. The best thing ANYONE could do is unionize.

Corporations are organized, why shouldn't workers be?

[customerserviceguy]

2. I've been hearing this "78 cents to the dollar" thing for years

Can anybody point to a reliable statistical proof of this?

Besides, male-dominated firms, such as securities firms, and manufacturers have been very hard hit by the recession/depression, surely higher male salaries are a more tempting target for cuts by businesses looking to fatten up the bottom line.