40 Years After King’s Death, Unions Still Best Route to Better Life for African Americans

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/03/31/40-years-after-kings-death-unions-still-best-route-to-better-life-for-african-americans/

by James Parks, Mar 31, 2008

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago this week in the midst of a campaign to support striking Memphis sanitation workers who were trying to gain better pay and working conditions by joining a union.

Now, a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shows that four decades after King’s death, union membership is still the best route to a better life for African American workers. Unions and Upward Mobility for African-American Workers found that black union workers earned, on average, 38 percent more than their nonunion peers. Click here to read the entire report.

The report, which analyzed federal Census Bureau data, also found that black workers in unions were 16 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 19 percent more likely to have an employer-provided pension plan than black workers who are not in unions. Learn more about the union difference for all workers by clicking here.

This is significant since reports show the current economic downturn is hitting black workers especially hard. Says John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR and author of the report:

Unions continue to be a central element of any plan to improve economic equality in this country.

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 not in unions. In the same low-wage occupations, unionized black workers were 20 percent 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.

FULL story at link.

There are are 20 different AFL-CIO blog logos that rotate per click. The one below was completly by chance.

[Fed_Up_Grammy]

1. Unions are the route to a better life for everyone.