Unionization Substantially Improves the Pay and Benefits of Immigrant Workers

A new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) documents a large wage and benefit advantage for immigrant workers in unions relative to their non-union counterparts.

The report, "Unions and Upward Mobility for Immigrant Workers,"
found that unionized immigrant workers earned, on average, 17 percent
more than their non-union peers. In addition, immigrant workers in
unions were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a
pension plan.

"It is the labor market, not the border that is broken," said John Schmitt,
a Senior Economist at CEPR and the author of the study. "Unionization
raises wages and benefits - and substantially - for both US-born and
immigrant workers."

The report, which analyzed data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey
(CPS), found that unionization raises the pay of immigrant workers
about $2.00 per hour. According to the report, immigrant workers in
unions were also 50 percent more likely to have employer-provided
health insurance and almost twice as likely to have an
employer-provided pension plan than immigrant workers who were not in
unions.

The study
also shows that unionization strongly benefited immigrant workers in
otherwise low-wage occupations. Among immigrant workers in the 15
lowest-paying occupations, union members earned almost 20 percent more
per hour than those workers who were not in unions. In the same
low-wage occupations, unionized immigrants were more than twice as
likely to have employer-provided health insurance and almost three
times as likely to have a pension plan than their non-union
counterparts.

Additional information is available from the following organizations:

Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO
Malcolm Amado Uno
Executive Director
Muno - at - apalanet.org

Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA)

Hector Sanchez
Director of Policy and Research

202-508-6918