In March 2019, Reyna Bello worked at a nail salon, located in the Astoria area of the Queens neighborhood.
“I was cleaning the floor near the basement entrance when I slipped, went backwards, and broke my left shoulder. Although I had surgery, I never looked well because it is difficult for me to lift my arm, I cannot bathe without suffering pain and in general it is very difficult for me to perform manual tasks.”
As a result of the accident, Bello was out of work for a year and upon returning to the same place where he had the accident, he was allowed to continue, but as his performance dropped due to the injury “which I hid from the owners to avoid losing my job,” one afternoon he suddenly and regardless of whether the place was full of people, “the owner simply chased me away and although she told me she would call me to give me something, she never did,” concludes the worker.
The case of Reyna Bello, a single mother with 4 children, summarizes very well everything that a union could have done to help this disgraced worker.
From the outset, it highlights the fact that unionized workers have protections against dismissal, in addition to helping them assert and fulfill their rights. They are also offered paid sick leave and time, retirement benefits, predictable schedules, health benefits, and care for their reproductive rights.
Although belonging to a union increases the wages of workers in general, it is specifically unionized women who tend to experience greater gains in their wages than men, as found in the study “Unions Are Good for Women” just published by the Center National Women’s Law Commission (NWLC) that offers hard-hitting data on union membership and its impact on women.
Regardless of the fact that the study finds that the decrease in union membership is a fact that should be of concern, the report highlights the importance of union membership for the economic empowerment of women, especially those from marginalized communities. It is known that wage and racial gaps tend to be more intense when the worker does not have papers, as was the case with Bello, who prays that one day the workers in the Beauty Salons will have the blessing of an organization that will help them. protect.
“There would be no unjustified dismissals like what happened to me, nor would they give us just 10 minutes to eat in the same place where we do our work, nor would they make us work on our day of rest or allow us to be absent when we are sick,” he exemplifies.
Being unionized makes a difference
In the United States, 7 out of 10 people in jobs classified as “lowest paying” are women.
Added to this brutal fact is the fact that women are the ones who disproportionately bear the responsibility of caring for children and the elderly, a task that is added to that of going out to seek sustenance. For the same reason, it does not explain the attitude taken by the employers themselves who systematically violate the law by organizing sophisticated and coercive anti-union campaigns, who abandon or stall contractual negotiations to affiliate employees without caring about the fines for all violations of workers’ rights. to organize.
The opposite example to Reyna Bello is Blanca Vidal who also worked for 15 years under the harsh working conditions of the same nail salons that flood the city. Vidal remembers how at the end of that stage and after joining the New York Committee For Occupational Safety & Health, NYCOSH, after a while the person who was her boss in this non-profit organization announced to her “Blanca, you haven’t taken your vacation and you have to do it”.
“Vacation, what is that?” says Vidal, now very amused about her initial reaction. Even after she went to take her annual rest days that were hers by law, “I felt bad for having done so” because I was used to the fact that, in 15 years in nail salons, “they never gave me even a week off.” ”.
Like that example and being affiliated with a union, Blanca understood that another world was possible and the work benefits were generous: Meal hours, discounts for other days of overtime worked, sick periods and paid vacations.
And Vidal does not stop when she continues citing the advantages of being supported by the United Steelworkers (USW), she who has already had the experience of working in both modalities: “On days of rest no one bothers us, now I have a fixed salary, a contract, and protections. There is a voice that represents me and people who fight so that I do not become a victim of discrimination.”
She relates that as a nail worker she never had a contract, in addition to being asked on her days off to go cover missing workers and the owners “were upset if I refused.”
But not only in that industry, women suffer discrimination and mistreatment. The injustice escalates if the worker is an immigrant and the mistreatment is followed by silence and reporting due to fear of losing one’s job.
“In 14 years, I experienced many injustices,” Vidal continues. “There is no time to eat, they did not pay me overtime, my days were long, we do not have seniority, if I was sick I could not be absent and then I would infect clients and colleagues, unjustified scolding, inhalation of chemicals that affect reproductive health , all of this without stopping taking care of my children and my home,” he finally says.
A past to which she would never want to return, now that she fights so that many of her colleagues do not continue suffering the same.
Wage and racial gap closes
The study delivered by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) offers revealing and, above all, hopeful data.
On the one hand, although surveys show that more and more workers want to join unions, union membership itself has been declining for decades as a result of anti-union tactics by employers, but also due to deficiencies in public policies that leave the insufficiently protected right to organize
Despite this, women already represent almost half of all union members (45.6%), and this increase includes black and Latina women. This last sector, when they unionize, usually earn 13,780 dollars more annually, a 34% difference, than non-unionized Latinas
But compared to the income of men, the difference also decreases because unionized Latinas earn 76 cents for every dollar that unionized white men earn, while non-unionized women earn just 64 cents compared to the same sector.
The benefits for unionized Latinas in full-time jobs continue with the difference in monthly salary of $800 compared to non-unionized women.
Seen in detail, the non-salary benefits can be seen as follows. For example, in the area of paid sick leave and sick time, it is known that ninety-two percent of unionized workers have it. And among those who do not belong to a labor organization, said averages drop considerably.
An affiliated woman usually also has the benefit of retirement, which is usually unfair due to two facts: women normally receive less income than men but live six years longer than men. Hence the importance of these benefits offered by unions to their members.
Predictable work schedules seek to avoid the abuses narrated by Bello and Vidal since having an established period of working time helps not only the success of the assignment itself but also helps the employee better organize her life outside the company. that provides its workforce.
Health benefits must be added to the benefits package. By 2023, 95% of unionized workers had access to employer-sponsored health insurance. Outside of the unions, that average reaches just 71%. Here we must add a relevant piece of information that emerged from a 2013 study that showed that employees’ annual contributions for family coverage averaged $828 when they had insurance sponsored by the employer and negotiated by a union. Outside of that scheme, families spent $4,565 dollars on average for medical care in the same period of time.
Researchers in the “Unions Are Good for Women” study found that unions have already implemented protections for people seeking abortions and other reproductive health services, including insurance coverage and travel benefits.
Finally, unionized workers were found to have additional protections against termination. Reyna Bello’s case would have had a different outcome and she could not have been fired so easily if she had been linked to a union. That’s her complaint.
The NWLC reports that retaliation can be economically devastating for low-wage workers who live paycheck to paycheck and cannot face a conflict that takes away their livelihood. And again, it is women, especially women of color, Native people, people with disabilities, immigrants, or LGBTQIA people, who are more likely not only to have low-paying employment but also to face the possibility of retaliation for enforcing the rules. rights in the workplace is threatening to them.
Investigation
The study can be reviewed at the following link: https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FINAL_FS_2024_nwlc_Unions_FS.pdf