A SURPRISING trend among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in the professional landscape is developing. Despite abating union memberships nationally, a close look by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) revealed a rise in union membership among AAPIs, up from 9.4 percent in 2013 to 10.4 percent last year—an increase of roughly 96,000 workers.

In addition, a higher percentage of AAPI women (11.3 percent) were unionized than female workers overall (10.7 percent).

“AAPI workers are a vital part of the American workforce and our rise in unionization rates reflects the growth, engagement and resilience of our community,” said Gregory Cendana, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA). “APALA will continue to organize throughout the country to ensure that unionization rates as well as union leadership continue to reflect the changing diversity of the workforce and country.”

Union membership, which is currently at 11.1 percent overall, has been on the decline for all other minority groups. However, the percentage of immigrants joining unions increased by 135,000 workers, from 8.8 percent in 2013 to 9.2 percent in 2014.

Because so many AAPIs are immigrants, 68.7 percent as compared to the overall immigrant workforce (only 16 percent), the rise in AAPI union membership may play a bigger role in the developing trend.

The difficulty in interpreting this data is that the number of AAPIs sampled was very small, and the time frame was only one year.

“It may be a one-year blip, so we really need to see what happens over the next couple of years to determine if this is real,” said Nicole Woo, CEPR Director of Domestic Policy. “But on the other hand, this may be the start of a new trend.”

Though the specific reasons behind the changing trends are not yet clear, the benefits of belonging to a union are.

“Since unionized AAPI workers earn significantly more and are much more likely to have access to health insurance and retirement plans than their non-union counterparts,” said Woo, “their rise in union membership translates into valuable benefits for many AAPI workers.”

(With reports from NBC News)

(www.asianjournal.com)
(Las Vegas February 5-11, 2015 Sec. A pg.1)