Benefits for Union members · Discounts on wireless services · Credit cards · Mortgages · Insurance plans · Union Plus Scholarships · Travel and entertainment · Get in touch · Fast. Affordable car insurance with driver education scholarships is also available. Over the past 25 years, union members and their children have received more than four million dollars from Union Plus scholarships. The AFL-CIO Organizing Institute (OI) is the country's leading training institution for union members.
We offer quality training to help organizers learn the skills they need to win and advance the labor movement. Union workers use their power in numbers to secure a fairer share of the income they generate. While states generally do not have jurisdiction over private sector unions, the NLRA, as amended, does allow states to enact certain laws that govern the dues paid by workers in unionized private workplaces (discussed later in this report). Only 6.4 percent of workers in the private sector belong to a union, compared to about 35 percent in the 1950s and about 25 percent in the early 1970s.
These strategies have been effective, as demonstrated by the different trends in unionization between workers in the private and public sectors. Workers who are not members of a union or are covered by a union contract are nearly twice as likely (4.4 percent) to suffer minimum wage violations as those who are members of a union or are covered by a union contract (2.3 percent). Some unions listed in this report received voluntary recognition from employers, and some organized campaigns in which the employer provided union organizers with free access to employees. Another study on 62 union representation campaigns launched in Chicago in 2002 revealed that 49 percent of employers threatened to close or relocate all or part of the company if workers chose to form a union.
Black workers, for example, are more likely than white workers to be part of a union and are more likely to be workers with low and medium wages, who receive a greater wage increase for being in a union than workers with higher wages. Overall, unionization is associated with a 14 to 32 percent decline in traumatic injuries and a 29 to 83 percent drop in deaths. Union members include dental hygienists in Wisconsin, graduate students in Massachusetts, firefighters in Illinois, writers and television scientists in California, and security guards in Washington, D. However, significant progress has been made in increasing the proportion of women represented by unions and union leaders.
