A Look at How Unions Lift Workers
More than 14 million workers across the United States—carpenters, steelworkers, nurses, teachers, truck drivers, and many others—are union members, but rarely does one read how unions have improved workers’ jobs and lives.
There are plenty of stories about weeks-long strikes, hard-fought unionization drives, unions’ role in political campaigns, and unions fighting to raise the minimum wage. Perhaps it’s considered too prosaic, but there are hardly any stories that examine in depth how belonging to a union or joining a union has changed workers’ lives and improved things for their families.
This report takes a look at five workers—a construction worker, a barista, a charter school teacher, a forklift operator at a warehouse, and a hospital aide—and documents how belonging to a union has lifted those workers, has improved their pay and benefits, and given them a far stronger voice at work.
Laura Asher, Crane Operator
It was September 11, 2001, and Laura Asher was driving from her hometown in Indiana to her new college in upstate New York when she heard about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
The following spring, as her freshman year was ending, she signed up for the Army National Guard—she was eager to serve her country, even if it meant leaving school. Besides, her father had warned her about accumulating a pile of college debt, and she realized that if she served in the military, the G.I. Bill would pay any future college tuition.
Asher, now age 38, served in Baghdad for a year as a combat medic during the Iraq War, working in ambulances and Medivac helicopters, often tending to the seriously wounded.
After Baghdad, Asher returned to her hometown, Valparaiso, Indiana, and enrolled in courses to obtain certification to become a hospital aide. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son, raising him as a single mother because things didn’t work out between her and the father.
Being a mother persuaded her to quit the Army. “I had seen women in my unit, and their two-year-old children that they left didn’t even know who they were anymore.” As a single mother, Asher needed money, so instead of returning to college full-time, the former medic took a hospital job—as a phlebotomist, drawing blood and checking blood pressure. After three years at the hospital, her pay was $14 an hour, and her biggest headache was health insurance: she was paying $600 a month for premiums, $7,200 a year—one-fourth her annual income.
“Between health insurance and day care of $125 a week, there was no money for anything other than necessities like diapers and car insurance,” Asher said. “I wasn’t able to do the things you want to do for your children, like buying toys or going on vacation or going out to eat. I was just barely surviving.” The veteran moved back in with her parents, a humbling experience.
It was time to take a different path, she decided. So she pursued two opportunities—she applied for a union apprenticeship to become a crane operator, and she applied to nursing school, although she resented the prospect of having to relearn much of what she had learned to become a medic. Minutes after registering for nursing school, she was walking back to her car and received a phone call—it was good news, the International Union of Operating Engineers was calling to say she had been accepted into the union’s apprenticeship program to become a crane operator. “The [union’s] helmets to hardhats program was how I got in,” Asher said. She withdrew from nursing school, without ever attending.
There were twenty-two apprentices in her crane program; just two of them were women. “I had been in the Army. I know how to deal with this,” she said. “I love a challenge.”
As soon as she began that apprenticeship back in 2011—it was run by the Operating Engineers—she was paid $19 an hour, with her compensation increasing each of the apprenticeship’s four years. “Within eight months, I was able to move out of my parents’ house with my son, and into my own apartment,” Asher said. “I wasn’t just providing for him. We were thriving. It wasn’t just macaroni and cheese and driving a beater.”
Mother and son took a beach vacation in South Carolina; they went to Disney World. “We were doing well. That’s the dream.”
LAURA ASHER CREDIT: MATTHEW NADOLSKI
In her apprenticeship, which was conducted under close union supervision, Asher spent hundreds of hours learning how to operate different kinds of cranes: for road construction, building office towers, repairing factories, and more. “There’s an old saying in the Operating Engineers: you feel it in your fanny,” she said. Asher has operated cranes that are twenty stories high and has become so expert that she now teaches some apprenticeship classes.
“When I get into the seat and start operating, they recognize this is not some girl. She knows her shit. She is good at the machine,” Asher said proudly. “I hold myself to a high standard and will outwork any man.”
LAURA ASHER CREDIT: MATTHEW NADOLSKI
In her current job, Asher operates a crane at the giant Cleveland-Cliffs steel mill (formerly ArcelorMittal) just east of Gary, Indiana, moving materials and equipment to repair the super-hot ovens that produce coke, a fuel used to make steel. Thanks to the union’s contract, her take home pay is $44.25 an hour, just under $1,800 for a forty-hour week—and that $44.25 is after deductions for her health care premiums and pension.
Asher now owns a house on five acres in the country, a far cry from living with her parents. She leaves home at 4:15 a.m. and works from 5:30 to 2:30. She is usually home by 3:30, and is grateful that she can see most of her son, Colin’s, games. Now in seventh grade, Colin plays football, baseball, and basketball. “I’m his biggest fan,” she said.
“The union has changed my life and given me opportunities to better myself,” Asher said. “I have the ability to show my child what you can do in adversity. Through hard work and the opportunities that come along, you can be anything that you want, you can climb as high as you want. It’s beautiful. The example I’m setting for my son I hope will run down my line for generations to come.”