*Unions boost wages most for               lowest-paid workers:
Some earn 20% more, study shows*
John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press

May 18--Union membership delivers a wage boost at all levels of the pay scale but especially for the lowest-paid workers, a Washington, D.C., think tank reported last week.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research, headed by University of Michigan-trained economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot, reported that unionized workers enjoy a wage premium on the order of 10% to 20% relative to nonunion workers with similar characteristics.

Economic data have long shown a wage premium for unionized workers relative to nonunion workers. The new study extends the analysis to workers at different wage levels.

The report, titled "The Union Wage Advantage for Low-Wage Workers," said that for workers in the lowest tenth of the pay scale, the union premium amounted to more than 20% over nonunion workers. For those in the highest tenth of the pay scale, the premium shrank to about 6%, but the benefit appeared at all levels.

In Michigan, the union premium ranged from a high of about 14% for the lowest-paid workers to about 4% for the highest paid. The full study can be found at www.cepr.net.

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest union coalition, cheered the report.  "For millions of workers who work hard and take home less to show for it, being part of a union that provides a say on the job is all the more important," Sweeney said. "This study proves that for workers on the bottom rungs of the pay scale, bargaining power is the best, and often only, means to gain a leg up to the middle class."

The report was written by John Schmitt, senior economist at the center.