The Union Difference

Fast Facts

·         Union workers’ median weekly earnings are 28 percent higher than their nonunion counterparts.

·         While only 16 percent of nonunion workers have guaranteed pensions, fully 70 percent of union workers do.

·         86 percent of union workers’ jobs provide health insurance benefits, compared with only 59.5 percent of nonunion workers’ jobs. Only 2.5 percent of union workers are uninsured, compared with 15 percent of nonunion workers.

·         Median weekly wages for women union workers are 34 percent higher than nonunion women.

·         Median weekly wages for African American workers in unions are 29 percent higher than for nonunion African Americans; for Latinos, the difference is 59 percent; and for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, it is 11 percent.

Joining A Union

Fast Facts

·         Fifty-three percent of nonunion workers say they want a union in their workplace, according to a recent national poll.

·         Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to form a union, force employee to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 78 percent require supervisors to deliver anti-union messages in one-on-one meetings with workers they oversee.

·         Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.

·         More than half of private-sector employers tell employees they will shut down partially or totally if the employees succeed in forming a union; in manufacturing more than 70 percent of employers tell workers this.

·         In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.

·         Even after workers successfully form a union, nearly half of the time, employers avoid negotiating a contract.

·         The union movement is supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect workers’ freedom to form unions by allowing them to choose a union through majority sign-up (card-check).

Health Care

Fast Facts

·         Nearly 46 million Americans lack medical coverage.

·         Since 2000, more than 5 million Americans under age 65 lost their health insurance.

·         Total underinsured and uninsured in the United States: 61 million people.

·         Nearly 48 million Americans will have no health insurance for the entire year in 2005.

·         While most Americans with health insurance rely on their employers for access to quality care, employers increasingly are shifting health care costs to workers who struggle to pay higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments.

·         More than eight in 10 of the non-elderly uninsured (83 percent) live in families where the head of the family works.

·         Health care spending rose 7.7 percent in 2003—following a 9.3 percent increase in 2002.

·         In 2003, one-quarter of seniors and 37 percent of the uninsured did not fill a prescription because of cost. Among the chronically ill, 35 percent failed to fill a prescription, changed their dosage or cut back on basic needs because of the high cost of prescription drugs.

·         Pharmaceutical spending increased by 11.5 percent annually between 2002 and 2003 and another 8.3 percent between 2003 and 2004.

·         From 2000 to 2004, the amount of annual health care premium employees pay for family coverage increased nearly 50 percent, from $1,619 to $2,412. The typical family health insurance policy cost $9,068 per year, with employers on average paying 73 percent and employees paying 27 percent.

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