Human Resource Executive Online, December 15, 2009, Tuesday

Human Resource Executive Online

December 15, 2009, Tuesday

Human Resource Executive Online

Women Reshape Union Agenda

Women make up nearly half of the union membership and that is having an impact on issues that come up at the bargaining table. There's more of an emphasis on work/life issues, paid sick leave and paternity leave, experts say.

By David Shadovitz


If the past 25 years are any indication of what lies ahead, women should soon represent the majority of the nation's union workers.

A recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington found that women made up 45 percent of union membership in 2008, up from 35 percent in 1983. Should that rate continue at its current rate, women will represent the majority of union workers by 2020, according to CEPR researchers.

Already, the demographic shift is having a profound effect on union agendas, experts say, and employers should expect that to hasten as women become an even larger portion of union membership.

In the report, The Changing Face of Labor: 1983 -- 2008, CEPR researchers note that women increased as a percentage of the union workforce at a much faster pace than the workforce as a whole during the past 25 years -- 9.8 percent versus 2.6 percent.

Despite this, the study found, the unionization rate for women -- the share of all women employees who are union members or represented by a union at work -- actually declined over that same period. In 2008, 12.9 percent of women were members of unions, compared to 18 percent in 1983.

After white men (38.1 percent), white women (31 percent) represented the second largest group of union workers today, according to CEPR. Black women made up 6.6 percent of union workers, while Latina and Asian women represented 4.8 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively.

Like most experts, Michael Lebowich, a partner with Proskauer Rose in New York, wasn't surprised by the overall findings.

"Given the shift in the workforce, it isn't surprising to see the number of women grow," he says. "If women represent more of the makeup of the workforce, it's going to represent more of the makeup of unions."

So it's only natural, he adds, that this is going to influence what's being discussed at the bargaining table.

"There's clearly more of a focus on work/life balance issues such as paid leave at the bargaining table as a part of the discourse unions are pushing at the national level these days," Lebowich says. And employers should expect these issues to become an even more prominent part of the union agenda in the years ahead.

John Schmitt, a senior economist with the CEPR and co-author of the report, agrees. "I have to believe these issues will be even more a part of union contract talks in the years ahead than they are today," he says.

Anecdotally, Schmitt says, he's already seeing issues such as paid sick leave and paternity leave become even more important parts of contract talks.

Experts believe a major reason women are rapidly becoming a more dominant demographic in unions is labor's shift away from manufacturing toward those fields with a heavy concentration of women workers, such as services and education.

The CEPR report found that only 10 percent of unionized workers are now in manufacturing, down from 30 percent in 1983.

Ileen A. DeVault, a professor of labor history at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Ithaca, N.Y., notes the growth of the service sector has contributed to the transformation. But it's also true that women are much more likely to move into non-service-sector jobs than they were a quarter of a century ago.

"We no longer think of the sex segregation of jobs as we've done in the past," says DeVault, as women breaking through the barriers of occupations previously dominated by men.

DeVault also points out that unions are doing a lot more to attract women and minorities to their ranks. "On a national level," she says, "the AFL-CIO over the last five years has made huge efforts to present itself as a more diverse labor movement."

But just as unions have modified their agendas to address the concerns of women, she says, so too have employers. When it comes to work/life issues, she says, "I think this is one place corporations have moved faster than unions.

"I think unions, unionized companies and companies worried about unionizing are all paying attention to these issues -- issues affecting both male and female workers -- and ways to address them," she says.

DeVault contends that if companies don't address these issues, then unions will. "It's going to come down to who is going to think these issues through first and be the most convincing," she says.

Lebowich agrees that those unions that are succeeding are the ones that recognize they're "playing to a new audience" and are able to modify their messages.

Unions are also beginning to name women to leadership positions, experts say, though some feel that effort is not nearly as extensive as it should be. Despite the changing demographics, DeVault says, "there continues to be a huge gap between women members and women leaders."

According to the CEPR report, women weren't the only demographic to experience gains as a percentage of the union workforce. Latinos climbed to 12.2 percent in 2008, from 5.8 percent in 1983, while Asians increased to 4.6 percent in 2008, from 2.5 percent in 1989.

Black workers, meanwhile, represented about 13 percent of the unionized workforce in 2008, a share that has held fairly steady since 1983.

December 15, 2009

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