The Effects of Teachers’ Unions on the Gender Pay Gap among U.S. Public School Teachers

Abstract

This study examines the effect of teachers’ unions on the gender pay gap among teachers under various legal environments, using nationally representative district–teacher matched data. To identify union effects, I employ propensity score matching, considering both contractual status and teacher union density in each district as a treatment. I find that teachers’ unions significantly reduce the gender pay gap, and the union effects vary by legal environment. I also find that unions reduce teacher attrition for female teachers, but not for male teachers, thereby decreasing the gender pay gap by helping female teachers accumulate experience.

Practice What You Preach: The Gender Pay Gap in Labor Union Compensation

“…Unions have been active in the fight for pay equity for decades (Hallock 1993) and have had some success in bridging the gender wage gap among unionized workers (e.g., Elvira and Saporta 2001; Han 2020; Spalter‐Roth, Hartmann, and Collins 1994). On the surface, we would thus expect that unions’ advocacy for pay equality also translates into equitable compensation practices within unions.…”

“…At present, a raw comparison of female and male full‐time wage and salary workers in the United States shows that women earn only 82 cents on the male dollar (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020b). This pay gap has been studied in a variety of contexts and appears to be ubiquitous – it exists in the private (e.g., Bell 2005; Muñoz‐Bullon 2010), public (e.g., Han 2020; Mandel and Semyonov 2014), and non‐profit sectors (Mesch and Rooney 2008; Nikolova 2014); across a number of industries, including manufacturing (e.g., Elvira and Saporta 2001) and service industries (e.g., Healy and Ahamed 2019); and among executives (e.g., Bertrand and Hallock, 2001; Carter, Franco, and Gine 2017), managers (e.g., Watson 2010), and employees (e.g., Drechsel‐Grau and Holub 2020; Han 2020). However, it has not yet been studied in labor unions, which is surprising given their societal status as agents of equality (Western and Rosenfeld 2011).…”

“…The gender pay gap has been closely scrutinized by scholars over the past several decades, with studies consistently showing that gender‐based wage differences are pervasive and persistent among executives (e.g., Bertrand and Hallock 2001; Carter et al. 2017; Muñoz‐Bullon 2010) and employees (e.g., Drechsel‐Grau and Holub 2020; Drolet and Mumford 2012; Han 2020), and across occupations and sectors. In the union context, however, none of the small body of research that has looked at union officer (e.g., French et al.…”

“…In a sector‐specific study, Elvira and Saporta (2001) examined several industries in the manufacturing sector and found that unionization is generally associated with a lower within‐establishment gender pay gap. More recently, analyses using nationally representative data (Han 2020) and state‐level data (Biasi and Sarsons 2020) found that female public school teachers face a higher gender wage gap when they do not have a union to bargain on their behalf. Cahen (2019) similarly finds using state‐level data of public employees that a reversal of collective bargaining rights is associated with a wage penalty that is largely concentrated on women.…”

“…Our survey results show that union staff compensation also appears to be largely standardized, this time through the collective bargaining process, with national union staff having a higher likelihood of being represented by a union than staff in local unions. Given the effectiveness of unions in reducing (though not eliminating it altogether) the gender wage gap for their members (e.g., Biasi and Sarsons 2020; Elvira and Saporta 2001; Han 2020; Spalter‐Roth et al. 1994), and our data showing that some union employees’ salaries are still set unilaterally by management, we predict that both national union staff and local union staff will face a gender pay gap, with the wage disparity larger in the latter group.…”