More Black and Latina women are leading unions and changing the way they work

But black and Latina women are beginning to gain ground, landing top positions at some of the largest U.S. unions, which has translated into wins at the bargaining table that focus more on family-friendly benefits like parental leave and health care coverage because as well as protection against sexual harassment.

Often when people think of unions, “they think of a white guy in a hard hat. But in fact, studies show that about two-thirds of working people who are covered by a union contract are women and/or people of color,” said Georgetown University labor historian Lane Windham.

Indeed, members of the hospitality union UNITE HERE are overwhelmingly women and people of color. And last month, more than 12,000 of them in six states went on strike to push for higher wages, fair workloads and more affordable health care under the leadership of Gwen Mills, who in June became the first woman elected union president in the 130 of them. -year of history.

Data from the US Department of Labor shows that black and Latina women face a particularly large pay gap. They also face headwinds of both racism and sexism in their careers, making them even more attuned to workplace inequities and motivating them to increasingly step up their fight as leaders unions.

Black and Latina women are driving union growth in the US amid a decades-long decline in membership. In 2023, black women’s union membership rate increased slightly from 10.3% to 10.5%, while Latinas rose from 8.5% to 8.8%. But it’s more than white men and women, as well as Asian women, whose membership has declined over the same time period.

Momentum for black and Latina women rising to union leadership has grown over the past five years. But the work began long before “our forefathers who laid this foundation and pushed and pushed open the doors for decades,” according to Liz Shuler, who in June 2022 became the first woman in history to lead the AFL-CIO . a federation of 60 national and international trade unions.

“I think the #MeToo movement has really encouraged women all over the world, including in labor, to say, you know what? I’m not going to sit on the sidelines,” Shuler said. The pandemic has also put a spotlight on essential workers such as nurses, service workers and care workers, who are predominantly women and minorities.

Today’s examples of diverse union leaders include Becky Pringle, a black woman who heads the National Education Association, the nation’s largest union; Bonnie Castillo, the first Latina to serve as executive 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 percent of service workers’ membership is black and two-thirds are women.

“If we want to build power on those who are perceived to have the least power, then we have to create space for our people with those identities to lead,” Verrett told The Associated Press.

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

Men still have a higher union membership rate than women — 10.5 percent versus 9.5 percent, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. And workplace sexual harassment and prejudice are still rampant in many places, including for Lisa Lujano of Chicago, a journeyman carpenter and member of Carpenters Union Local 13.

Things could improve, she said, if more black and Latina women held union leadership positions and were more aware of their membership needs, including protective gear that fits women’s bodies or parental leave, which Lujano doesn’t have them.

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

Here’s a look at the impact union leaders had at the bargaining table:

Education

Teacher unions have in recent years begun to use their collective power to promote global benefits that help their surrounding community in a method known as “just for the common good,” which aims to go beyond pay and benefits at the table of negotiations and to address wider social issues. The Chicago Teachers Union, for example, included 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 United Teachers Los Angeles, which has called on the school district to stop subjecting students to random metal detectors and locker checks without reason, denouncing the practice as targeting disproportionately black and minority students.

“We need to address the inequities that are embedded in every social system in this country that determine whether our students come to school prepared to learn every day,” Pringle said. “It’s been our female leaders, especially our leaders of color, who have really leaned into it.”

Hospitality

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

Mata, a Hispanic housekeeper and UNITE HERE union leader at the W San Francisco, helped lead a successful push at her hotel to have workers equipped with panic buttons in 2018 to call for security help in an emergency, now implemented by several important hotel chains.

“I needed more protection,” especially during night shifts spent cleaning entire floors, explained Mata, who has twice been sexually harassed at work. “It’s very dangerous.”

It’s also vital that working women are at the negotiating table, “because sometimes as women we need something that men don’t know,” said Mata, whose hotel is currently in negotiations for a new contract.

Flight attendants

In 2022, Keturah Johnson became the first black queer woman to serve as international vice president for the 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 frequently face microaggressions from managers about their appearance, Johnson said. “It’s happened to me many times 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’s leading the fight to update uniform standards to include gender and allow natural hairstyles, which has led to changes by several airlines.

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

“We’re 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.”