Working women are ready to fight for pay equity, affordable health care and access to higher education, according to a new AFL-CIO study.
The federation’s newly released National Survey of Working Women also showed that working women are also stretched thin on time because of work and family responsibilities.
In the study, about 46 percent of the nearly 25,000 working women who responded are strongly motivated to take action to ensure pay equity.
Although the Equal Pay Act was signed into law in 1963, women still earn about 80 cents for every dollar that men earn for the same work.
In this era of increasingly unbalanced economies, equal pay is as much of an economic issue as a social justice fight. Women are increasingly the primary earners in their households, including 59 percent of the study respondents, and 87 percent of the women in the study make financial decisions for their households.
The study also confirmed that belonging to a union also benefits you financially; non-union women were more than twice as likely to earn poverty-level wages (under $25,000 per year), while 68 percent of the women who responded to the survey earned what the study defined as middle-class wages ($25,000 to $100,000 per year).
Union women are also far more likely to have health benefits, overtime and a pension.
Visit www.aflcio.org/Issues/Work-and-Family/Equal-Pay-Equal-Say to learn more and read the study.
Maryann Phelps, CSEA Statewide Veterans Committee chair and SUNY Stony Brook Local treasurer, on how union membership has helped ensure that women get equal pay.
