According to a report from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, “Latinos in non-union jobs were seven times more likely than Latinos in labor unions to fall into unemployment during three key months early in the Pandemic.”
The report studied the Current Population Survey data and analyzed the impact of unionization on Latino employment rates and wages between January 2020 and June 2021.
“Labor unions gave us child labor regulations, work-free weekends, and the collective power to demand better conditions,” said Sonja Diaz, the founding director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative. “Our report shows that during economic downturns such as the one we faced amid COVID-19, union jobs can also provide much-needed stability for workers and their families.”
The report found that in the first quarter of 2020, more than 2.5 million Latino workers were unionized, while 23.1 million were not. At the height of the pandemic’s economic recession in the second quarter of 2020, unionized Latino employment fell 2.5 percent while non-unionized Latino employment shrank by 18.5 percent, a job loss seven times higher than unionized Latino workers.
The Initiative concluded, “unionized workers endured smaller relative employment losses than non-union workers during the pandemic’s peak. Overall, unionized employment fell 10.2 percent from the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter while non-union employment fell 12.9 percent. This trend holds true across racial and ethnic groups.”
