More and more Black and Latina women are leading unions – and transforming the way they work

Women make up roughly half of U.S. union membership, but representation in top positions of union leadership has lagged, even in female-dominated industries and especially for women of color.

But Black and Latina women are starting to gain ground, securing top positions in some of the largest unions in the US. That has translated into victories at the bargaining table that focus more on family-friendly benefits like parental leave and health care coverage. as well as protection against sexual harassment.

When people think of unions, they often think of a white man wearing a helmet. But research shows that about two-thirds of working people covered by union contracts are women and/or people of color. said labor historian Lane Windham of Georgetown University.

The membership of the hospitality union Unite Here consists largely of women and people of color. And last month, more than 12,000 of them across six states went on strike to push for wage increases, fair workloads and more affordable health care, led by Gwen Mills, who in June became the first woman elected union president in the United States. its 130-year history.

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that Black and Latina women experience an especially large gender wage gap. They also face intersectional headwinds of both racism and sexism in their careers, making them even more attuned to workplace inequality and motivating them to increasingly step up the fight as union leaders.

Black and Latina women are driving the growth of unions in the U.S. amid a decades-long decline in membership. In 2023, Black women’s membership rate saw a slight increase from 10.3% to 10.5%, while Latinas rose from 8.5% to 8.8%. But that’s still more than white men and women, as well as Asian women, whose membership fell over the same period.

Momentum for Black and Latina women rising to union leadership has increased over the past five years. But the work began long before that by “our foremothers who laid this foundation and have been pushing and kicking those doors open for decades,” said Liz Shuler, who in June 2022 became the first woman to lead the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 national and international trade unions.

“I think the #MeToo movement has really encouraged women across the board, including during childbirth, to say, ‘You know what? I’m not going to sit on the sidelines,” Shuler said. The pandemic also put a spotlight on essential workers, such as nurses, providers and health care workers, who are predominantly women and minorities.

Contemporary examples of diverse labor leaders include Becky Pringle, a black woman who leads the National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union; Bonnie Castillo, the first Latina to become director of National Nurses United; and April Verrett, who in May became the first Black woman to lead the Service Employees International Union, which says about 60% of service employee members are people of color, and two-thirds are women.

“If we want to build power over those who are perceived to have the least power, then we have to create space for our people with that identity to be able to lead,” Verrett told the Associated Press.

But while female-dominated sectors have made progress in union leadership diversity, “there is still a long way to go” for unions in male-dominated sectors such as construction and manufacturing, according to University labor historian Emily Twarog of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Despite some progress through DEI and apprenticeship programs, “there hasn’t been that kind of culture change.”

Men still have higher union membership than women: 10.5% versus 9.5%, respectively, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And sexual harassment and bias in the workplace are still widespread in many places, including among Chicago-based Lisa Lujano, a trade-level carpenter and member of Carpenters Union Local 13.

Things could get better, she said, if more Black and Latina women took leadership roles in unions and were more aware of the needs of their membership, including safety equipment that fits women’s bodies, or parental leave, which Lujano doesn’t have .

“I think we would get more respect in the field,” she said.

Here’s a look at the impact women union leaders have had at the bargaining table.

Education

Teachers unions in recent years have begun to use their collective power to push for comprehensive benefits to help the surrounding community, in a manner known as “bargaining for the common good,” which aims to go beyond wages and benefits to the negotiating table and the problems addressing broader social issues. The Chicago Teachers Union, for example, took up demands for affordable housing across the city during a 2019 strike — organized in part by then-Vice President Stacy Davis Gates, who is now CTU president.

Some teachers unions are also fighting for racial justice, including the United Teachers Los Angeles, which demanded that the school district stop subjecting students to random metal detector checks and locker checks without cause, and denounced the practice as disproportionately targeting Black students and students from minority groups.

“We must address the inequities built into every social system in this country that determine whether our students are ready to come to school every day to learn,” said NEA President Pringle. “It was our women leaders, especially our leaders of color, who really leaned into that.”

Hospitality

Unionized hotel workers like Maria Mata have made progress in the fight against widespread sexual harassment in their profession.

Mata, a Spanish housekeeper and Unite Here union leader at the W San Francisco, helped lead a successful effort at her hotel in 2018 to equip employees with panic buttons to summon safety assistance in an emergency, which has now been implemented by several major hotel chains .

“We needed more protection,” especially during night shifts where we only cleaned entire floors, explains Mata, who has twice experienced sexual harassment at work. “It’s very dangerous.”

It is also essential that the women who do the work are also at the negotiating table, “because as women sometimes we need something that the men don’t know,” says Mata, whose hotel is currently negotiating a new contract.

Flight attendants

Keturah Johnson in 2022 became the first queer woman of color to serve as international vice president of flight attendant union AFA-CWA, which is led by Sara Nelson and represents more than 50,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines.

People often think of a flight attendant as “a white woman with hair in a bun,” and black flight attendants often face microaggressions from managers about their appearance, Johnson said. “It’s happened to me a lot because of my natural hair.”

And for gender-nonconforming flight attendants, it’s important to be able to wear a uniform that reflects their gender identity, Johnson said. So she is leading the fight to change uniform standards to be gender inclusive and allow for natural hairstyles, which has led to several airlines making changes.

For example, United Airlines updated its uniform standards with gender-neutral options in 2021, and Alaska Airlines management adopted gender-neutral uniform and appearance standards in 2022, according to AFA. Frontier allowed natural hairstyles for flight attendants in 2021, and this year introduced standardized pricing for all uniforms, regardless of size or gender.

“We are not just there to serve Diet Coke. And so it’s our job to make sure that flight attendants are represented and seen for who they are,” Johnson said. “The world has changed now.”