Unionization Substantially Improves the Pay and Benefits of African-American Workers

Union Membership Plays Valuable Role in Countering Economic Inequality

Forty years ago this week, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he traveled in support of city sanitation workers striking for better work pay and working conditions. According to a report released Monday by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC, and the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, four decades after King's death unionization still significantly increases the pay and benefits of African-American workers. The report, entitled "Unions and Upward Mobility for African-American Workers," found that unionized black workers earned, on average, 12 percent more than their non-union peers.

According to the report 11% of Pennsylvania’s union members are African-American, and African-Americans make up 9% of all Pennsylvania’s workers.

The report also found that black workers in unions were much more likely to have health-insurance benefits and a pension plan than comparable black workers who were not in unions.

“The data demonstrate that unions raise wages and increase access to health insurance and pensions,” said John Schmitt, a Senior Economist at CEPR and the author of the study. "Unions continue to be a central element of any plan to improve economic equality in this country."

The report, which analyzed data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS), found that unionization raises the pay of African-American workers by about $2.00 per hour. According to the report, black workers in unions are also 16 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 19 percentage points more likely to have an employer-provided pension plan than black workers who are not in unions.

According to the study, unionization has an even more dramatic effect on black workers in low-wage jobs. Among African-American workers in the 15 lowest-paying occupations, union members earn 14 percent more than those workers who are not in unions. In the same low-wage occupations, unionized black workers were 20 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 28 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan than similar black workers who were not in unions.