AFL-CIO: African Americans Win With Unions (by my good friend Edgar Moore here in Omaha)

[Omaha Steve]

How I know Edgar: http://www.unomaha.edu/wbils/staff.php

http://www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/speakout/edgar_moore.cfm

By Edgar Moore

For any people to be able to exercise their rights effectively, they must have certain preconditions—a job, physical safety, education, adequate housing and medical care. Without those preconditions, those formal rights are a dead letter. They can’t be exercised. Labor unions have done more to provide those conditions for African Americans than any other social institution in the United States.

According to John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a higher percentage of African American workers (16.2 percent) belong to unions than the rest of the population (13.5 percent) for good reason. Unions serve the African American community well. It is true that unions, like the rest of American society, delayed opening their doors to African Americans for too long, but enormous progress has been made since it happened.

Union membership benefits both male and female African Americans. Black men earn more if they are in a union ($18.15 per hour) as opposed to only $13.50 for nonunion men. Unionized African American men are more likely to have health insurance (76.7 percent) than nonunion black men (65 percent). The same holds true for health insurance and pension coverage.

Black women in unions earn more ($17.20 an hour) than nonunion black women ($12.00),and are much more likely to have health care coverage and a pension.

For African American workers, the union advantage with respect to health insurance and pension coverage remains large, even after considering differences in workers’ characteristics. Unionized African American workers are about 16 percentage points more likely to have health insurance and about 19 percentage points more likely to have a pension than nonunion workers.

Even in low wage occupations, African Americans in unions earn more than nonunion African American workers in the same occupations and are more likely to have health insurance and a pension plan.

FULL story at link.