What workers, especially low-wage workers, really want and how best to provide it
By Margaret Poydock, Lynn Rhinehart, and Celine McNicholas, epi.org
Unionized workers are far more likely to receive various workplace benefits compared with nonunion workers. These benefits include paid leave of various types (sick, family, vacation, personal), employer-provided health care, retirement benefits, and more. Establishing these benefits as part of collective bargaining and including them in a collective bargaining agreement gives unionized workers confidence and security that these benefits will be there when they need them, because a collective bargaining agreement is a legally binding contract (Bivens et al. 2017; Shierholz et al. 2024).