Oppressed women lead growth of union membership

Union membership is now increasing after 25 years of decline, and women are instrumental to this significant turnaround. More than 201,000 women joined U.S. unions in 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Women, who represent 44 percent of the workforce, are now nearly two-thirds of the new union members. While white men dominated the ranks of unions for so long, their numbers have been greatly diminished as their jobs have been replaced with technology or moved around the world to places where workers can be superexploited and paid a much lower percentage of the value of their labor.

However, capitalists cannot move those businesses that provide services out of the communities that need to access them. Unions have been focusing on these sites. Some of the biggest gains of union membership for women are in health care, childcare, educational support, government work, hotel, motel and food services. These are also low paying jobs where the most oppressed workers have been funneled because of racism, sexism and the loss of higher skilled, higher paying jobs.

While the proportion of union members who are white women increased from 29 percent to 33 percent since the mid-1980s, the proportion who are women of color increased by as much as 25 percent during the same period. While Black workers are the most unionized (14.3 percent), many nationalities can be found working together.

This change in the social character of the working class is now having a big impact on the consciousness and organization of working women. Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University notes research that says that elections won by unions tend to be highly concentrated in units with a majority of women. Women and workers of color, individually and as a group, have been found to be more likely to vote for unions. The highest win rates by far (82 percent) are in units with 75 percent or more women of color. (“Organizing Women: The Nature and Process of Union Organizing Efforts Among U.S. Women Workers Since the mid-1990’s,” 2003)

The gains of oppressed women in unions can be seen in the fact that in 2007 African-American women earned $184 more a week and Latinas $229 more than their nonunion counterparts. Union members are more likely than nonunion counterparts to have health and pension benefits and to receive paid holiday and vacations, as well as life and disability insurance.

These gains are now at great risk of being taken away. The ruling class of business owners and bankers has not been successful in turning around a huge economic crisis that threatens to take down the whole U.S financial system. Hundreds of billions of dollars from government and private banks, all money made from the unpaid labor of the working class, has not been enough to reverse the crisis.

What becomes more obvious everyday is that the next huge pot of money they will go after will be tax money that is the basis for all the social programs workers have fought and died for over decades. In fact, the most likely programs that they will try to cut will be health, social security, pensions, unemployment insurance and other entitlement programs.

The same forces that have begun to change the union movement will be called upon to lead a broad struggle to push back this greedy cutthroat class of exploiters.

Hiestand is a retired RN and former union organizer and chief steward of CWA Local 1168.