Black and White Unite

An extensive body of research has established that union members earn higher wages than their nonunion counterparts doing the same type of work. And our own research confirms a large effect of union membership on wages for both black and white workers, an effect that holds true even after we take into account other influences on wages such as age, education, occupation and the particular industry and state where workers are employed. Across the decades covered by our data, unionized workers in the private sector have wages about 25% higher than otherwise similar nonunion workers.

Nationally, union membership rates for black men in the private sector rose to nearly 40% by the early 1970s. What's more, by the end of the 1970s, nearly 1 in 4 black women in the private sector belonged to a union, double the rate of union membership among white women.

Using 40 years of nationally representative data,  research by Meredith Kleykamp and Jake Rosenfeld, professors of sociology at the University of Maryland and the University of Washington, respectively aimed to discover what wage trends among blacks and whites, men and women, would have looked like if union membership in the private sector of the U.S. economy had not declined so sharply. Here is what they learned:

• Had union membership rates for women remained at late-1970s levels, racial wage inequality among women in private sector jobs today would be reduced by as much as 30%.

• If rates of union membership among African American men working in the private sector were as high today as in the early 1970s, weekly wages would now be about $50 higher. For a full-time worker, that translates to an income increase of $2,600 a year. Regardless of race, all male workers have lost ground in the private sector as unions have declined.

Its findings recast the modern American labor movement as a remarkably inclusive institution that gave a vital boost to the economic fortunes of African American as well as white workers and their families. The near disappearance of private sector unions in recent times has made many of America's economic and social problems worse, including racial wage gaps.