The SMART Local 46 Advantage

Unions guarantee rewards for hard work and initiative.
  • Workers with unions earn an average 25 percent more than do workers without a union.
  • Seventy-three percent of union members in the private industry get health benefits on the job, compared with about half of workers without unions.
  • Seventy percent of union members in medium and large private companies are covered by pensions that guarantee a benefit, compared with only 16 percent of workers without a union
Unions help remedy discrimination in the workplace.
  • Union contracts raise earnings by 30 percent for working women and African Americans and 45 percent for Latinos.
  • Union contracts help make sure that everyone is treated fairly and equally on the job.
Unions raise living standards for the whole community.
  • For decades, union membership paved the way to a strong and growing middle class. As union membership declined, the gap between the wealthy and everyone else grew.
  • Better wages and benefits through unions mean that more families can make it on their own in the community – and the wage and benefit floor is lifted for everyone.
  • Studies show that states where many of the workers have a union are also states with lower poverty rates, better schools and less crime.