Yesterday was Equal Pay Day! Did you know the reason why it’s celebrated on a Tuesday? It’s because that’s how long it takes women to play catch up and earn what men earned in the previous week. As for being in the middle of April — it’s because that’s how long it takes women to earn what men earned the previous year. A sad reality…however, being a union gal pays!
Here’s why:
According to this article by Charity Jackson at the AFL-CIO:
- The gender wage gap among union members is half the size of the wage gap among non-union workers
- Union women working full time earn on average 90.6% of what their male peers earn
- The wage gap for union members fell 2.6 cents between 2012 and 2013, but was virtually unchanged for non-union workers
- The pay gap between union women and men earning a weekly median wage is nearly $40 less than the gap between non-union women and men