Labor & Employment Law

Report: Unions Are Big Advantage for Asian American/Pacific Islander Workers

By James Parks

Asian American and Pacific Islander workers who belong to unions enjoy a large wage and benefit advantage over their nonunion counterparts, according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

The report, ”Unions and Upward Mobility for Asian American and Pacific Islander Workers, ” using the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, finds that joining a union increases the pay of Asian American and Pacific Islander workers by about $2.50 per hour. Asian American and Pacific Islanders in unions are 16 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 22 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided pension plans than their nonunion peers.

Latinos make up the only group growing faster as a part of the union workforce than Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, says Nicole Woo, director of domestic policy at CEPR and an author of the report.

While this is reflective of workforce trends in general, the data show that joining a union makes a big difference in the wages and benefits of [Asian American and Pacific Islander] workers.

Among the other findings in the study:

• About one in eight (12.5 percent) Asian American and Pacific Islander workers is in a union or represented by a union at work.
• Nearly half (48.8 percent) of Asian American and Pacific Islander workers in unions are women. Half (50.5 percent) have a four-year college degree or more, and 43.4 percent are in the public sector.
• On average, two-thirds (67 percent) of unionized Asian American and Pacific Islander workers are immigrants.
• Asian American and Pacific Islanders in unions are heavily concentrated in several states, with some 60 percent in the Pacific states and about 40.5 percent in California alone.

 Click here to read the full report.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 22, 2011 (boomark / email).