Unionization Key To Closing Racial Wage Gap

Turns out busting public schools is NOT the secret recipe to closing the racial wage gap:

A study released on Friday, noting the gains made by black union workers in New York City, said that raising the rate of unionization among black workers across the country would help narrow the racial pay gap.

The study, conducted by two professors affiliated with the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at the City University of New York, which issued the report, described high unionization rates for black workers who live in the city compared with national rates.

Nearly 40 percent of black workers who are city residents are union members, compared with roughly 13 percent of black workers nationally.

The difference between the rates of black and nonblack unionization is also especially pronounced in New York City. The black unionization rate is nearly double that of nonblacks in the city, a difference that is much smaller nationally.

The authors, Ruth Milkman and Stephanie Luce, found that black union members enjoyed higher wages than black nonunion workers, and were also likely to have better access to employer-sponsored health care benefits and pensions.

“Unionism offers black workers a substantial economic advantage in regard to earnings — to a greater degree than is the case for nonblacks, reflecting the fact that larger numbers of blacks than nonblacks are employed in low-wage jobs,” the study said.

Gee, who'd a thunk it?

Workers with union protections and wages have economic advantages that workers without union protections and wages have.

Maybe reformers should try to stop trying to bust the public school "monopoly" and push for union jobs if they actually care about closing the racial wage gap.

But they don't actually care about any such thing.

The rhetoric around closing the racial achievement gap or racial wealth gap is just the cover story for their real aim - the privatization of the school system and the busting of the teachers unions.