What does being in a union really achieve? Ask the cocktail servers in Las Vegas.
Perhaps an unlikely symbol of the triumphs of organizing, Culinary 226, the largest union local in Nevada, is a majority-female union — comprised in large part of older, immigrant women — and has shaped the Las Vegas casino workforce over the years.
According to an editorial in the New York Times yesterday by Brittany Bronson (Why Las Vegas Is a Great Place for Working-Class Women):
The Las Vegas casino scene runs counter to most American workplaces, where women tend to lose power as they age. According to research by the recruiting site Glassdoor, the pay gap, even after it’s adjusted for things like occupation, increases with age — from 2.2 percent for women ages 18 to 24 to 10.5 percent for women between 55 and 64. Family obligations and gender discrimination take women out of the American work force, meaning fewer promotions, fewer women in management and ultimately fewer raises.
Yet Nevada, home to an industry where sex appeal can be a legal job requirement, boasts one of the smallest gender pay gaps in the country. According to a December 2015 report by PayScale, the state tied with Connecticut for the state with the most equal gender pay.
Bronson, who recently worked as a seasonal cocktail server in Las Vegas, continues:
There are certain statistical realities that work to our advantage. Wage industries like hospitality, with large numbers of women, tend toward greater equality. The unemployment rate can falsely shrink a wage gap, and Nevada’s is currently high.
But according to the Pew Charitable Trust, unionization plays a large role in shrinking the gap: Women in unions make 88 percent of what men earn, compared with the 81 percent that women make outside unions.
The benefits ripple outward, in the form of family wealth building and educational opportunities. According to a March 2015 New York Times report, a girl in a poor family who grows up in Las Vegas will make 7 percent more than she would elsewhere by age 26. Income mobility for women is better in Clark County, where Las Vegas is, than it is in 71 percent of counties nationwide.
For the full editorial, visit the New York Times.
