American Women Gain Clout in Unions After Pandemic Sacrifices
American Women Gain Clout in Unions After Pandemic Sacrifices
(Bloomberg) -- The unprecedented exodus of women from the workplace during the pandemic is empowering those who remain, helping spur a resurgence in labor organizing as industries such as health care, education and retail confront an acute shortage of jobseekers.
As unions and advocates gain more clout than they’ve had in years amid an increased appreciation for so-called essential workers, female-led professions like teaching and nursing are leading the way. Women are becoming a bigger share of the unionized workforce, and have played key roles in some of the 45 strikes since August tracked by Bloomberg Law.
More action could be on the way. Teachers in Scranton, Pennsylvania, plan to walk off the job today. Flight attendants at a regional carrier for American Airlines authorized a strike last month, and nurses are on the brink of striking at the Kaiser Permanente healthcare system in California. Workers at McDonald’s Corp. restaurants in 12 cities walked out Oct. 26 to draw attention to accusations of sexual harassment.
And while strikes among manufacturing workers at tractor maker Deere & Co. and cereal company Kellogg Co. are the most high-profile disputes of late, labor experts say industries with a higher percentage of women are poised to set the agenda for worker rights in the years to come.
“The most dynamic leaders in the labor movement, both on the national and the local level, are women,” said Brishen Rogers, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who focuses on labor and employment law. “Class and gender are completely intertwined here.”
Rogers is pointing to people like Liz Shuler, recently named the first female president of the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. union federation; Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants; and Mary Kay Henry, the leader of the Service Employees International Union. They’ve emphasized the need to prioritize not only pay and benefits, but also issues that are traditionally less prominent -- like paid sick time, minimum staffing levels, schedule flexibility, mental health and workplace safety.
These topics rose to the fore in the past 18 months during the pandemic, when keeping nurses and teachers on the frontlines was a top priority. Workers made sacrifices to maintain the status quo even as many saw their own child-care responsibilities grow. Now, they’re seeking changes in the form of better contracts and a bigger voice in U.S. unions.
“The public image of a union is still in manufacturing,” said Kate Andrias, a professor at Columbia University Law School. “But a lot of the most innovative and effective organizing in recent years has occurred in female-dominated service-sector jobs.”
Women were at the vanguard of the wave of teacher strikes that started in 2018, according to Andrias. In Illinois and West Virginia, statewide walkouts took place even when the law didn’t protect them. And rather than being exclusively focused on higher pay or benefits, teachers also highlighted the challenges low-income students faced.
“The reason women take dramatic action is actually less so for themselves, but is actually more for their families or the people they care for,” said Henry, the international president of the SEIU.
Female-dominated unions are gaining ground partly because of how hard it’s been to keep workers in industries like education and health care. Employees in the care economy and service industries have experienced a high rate of burnout, with the burden falling disproportionately on women who also faced greater demands for child care at home.
About 18% of health-care workers have left their jobs since the beginning of the pandemic according to a survey by the research firm Morning Consult. And almost one in four teachers said they were likely to quit by the end of the school year, up from one in six before the pandemic, according to a survey conducted by Rand Corporation, a nonprofit and policy think tank.
In California, 21,000 health-care workers have threatened to strike at Kaiser Permanente, one of the state’s largest private medical networks. Workers at U.S. Starbucks Corp.’s cafes won a victory last week in their fight to unionize stores, and journalists at Politico are petitioning the U.S. government for a vote on unionizing.
Dorothy Sue Cobble, professor emerita of history and labor studies at Rutgers University, expects women to account for a larger portion of the unionized workforce in years to come. She says women have the most to gain from joining the movement given issues of pay inequity, with female workers -- and female workers of color especially -- earning the least.
The labor crunch is bumping up pay in the U.S., but data show union membership can help narrow wage inequity. A recent report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research said that unionized women earn 87 cents for every dollar that men make, whereas non-unionized women earn 82 cents.
Unionization is far below its 1950s peak. Yet as membership declined in recent years, men left at a faster pace, boosting the percentage of women among the unionized workforce. Women now make up a record 47%, up from 37% three decades ago.
Kathy Kelly, a nurse at Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, New York, has been on strike since Oct. 1, asking for higher staffing levels among other demands, saying the hospital has struggled to adequately treat patients. She says the pandemic has taken a toll on colleagues unlike any she’s seen during her 38 years as a registered nurse. There’s rampant burnout and attrition, which has led the workers that remain to hit a breaking point. The hospital is coping with the strike by hiring contract workers.
“No one wants to walk away from the bedside,” Kelly said. “We had to say: Enough is enough. You can’t keep treating us like this.”
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