More Black and Latina women are leading unions - and transforming how they work

Women make up roughly half of U.S. labor union membership, but representation in top level union leadership positions has lagged, even in female-dominated industries and particularly for women of color.

But Black and Latina women are starting to gain ground, landing top positions at some of the biggest unions in the U.S. That has translated into wins at the bargaining table that focus more attention on family-friendly benefits like parental leave and health care coverage, as well as protections against sexual harassment.

Often when people think about unions, "they think of a white guy in a hard hat. But in fact, studies show that about two-thirds of working people who are covered by a union contract are women and/or people of color,” said Georgetown University labor historian Lane Windham.

Indeed, hospitality union UNITE HERE's membership is majority women and people of color. And last month, more than 12,000 of them across six states went on strike to push for wage increases, fair workloads and more affordable health care under the leadership of Gwen Mills, who in June became the first woman to be elected union president in its 130-year history.

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor shows that Black and Latina women experience a particularly wide gender pay gap. They also face intersectional headwinds of both racism and sexism in their careers, making them even more attuned to inequities in the workplace and motivating them to increasingly step up the fight as union leaders.

Black and Latina women are driving labor union growth in the U.S. amid a decades-long decline in membership. In 2023, Black women's union membership rate notched a slight bump from 10.3% to 10.5%, while Latinas went up from 8.5% to 8.8%. But that's still more than white men and women as well as Asian women, whose membership experienced a decrease during the same time period.

Momentum for Black and Latina women rising into labor union leadership has picked up in the last five years. But the work began long before that by "our foremothers who laid this foundation and have been pushing and kicking those doors open for decades,” according to Liz Shuler, who in June 2022 became the first woman in history to lead the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 national and international labor unions.

“The #MeToo movement, I think, has really emboldened women across the board, including in labor, to say, you know what? I’m not going to be sitting on the sidelines,” Shuler said. The pandemic also put a spotlight on essential workers such as nurses, service workers and care workers, who are predominantly women and minorities.

Today’s examples of diverse union leaders include Becky Pringle, a Black woman who leads the National Education Association, the nation's largest union; Bonnie Castillo, the first Latina to serve as executive director of National Nurses United; and April Verrett, who in May became the first Black woman to lead the Service Employees International Union, which says about 60% of its service worker members are people of color, and two-thirds are women.

“If we want to build power on those who are perceived to have the least amount of power, then we've got to create space for our people of those identities to be able to lead,” Verrett told The Associated Press.

But while female-dominated fields have made strides in union leadership diversity, “there is still a long way to go” for unions in male-dominated fields like building and manufacturing trades, said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign labor historian Emily Twarog. Despite some gender diversity headway through DEI and apprenticeship programs, “there hasn’t been that kind of culture shift.”

Men continue to have a higher union membership rate than women — 10.5% versus 9.5% respectively, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And workplace sexual harassment and biases still run rampant in many places, including for Chicago-based Lisa Lujano, a journey-level carpenter and member of Carpenters Union Local 13.

Things might get better, she said, if more Black and Latina women held union leadership roles and were more aware of their memberships' needs, including safety gear that fits women’s bodies, for example. Or parental leave, which Lujano does not have.

“I think we would get more respect out in the field,” she said.

Here's a look at the impact women union leaders have had at the bargaining table:

Teachers’ unions have in recent years begun to use their collective power to push for wraparound benefits to help their surrounding community in a method known as "bargaining for the common good," which aims to go beyond wages and benefits at the bargaining table and tackle wider social issues. The Chicago Teachers Union, for example, included demands for affordable housing citywide during a strike in 2019 — in part organized by then-vice president Stacy Davis Gates, who is now CTU president.

Some teachers' unions are also fighting for racial justice, including the United Teachers Los Angeles, which demanded that the school district stop subjugating students to random metal detector screenings and locker checks without cause, decrying the practice as disproportionately targeting Black and minority students.

“We need to address the inequities that are built into every single social system in this country that determine whether our students come to school ready to learn every day,” Pringle said. “It was our female leaders, particularly our leaders of color, who really leaned into that.”

Unionized hotel workers like Maria Mata have made strides toward fighting the rampant sexual harassment in their profession.

Mata, a Hispanic housekeeper and UNITE HERE union leader at the W San Francisco, helped lead a successful push at her hotel for workers to be equipped with panic buttons in 2018 to summon security help in an emergency, now implemented by several major hotel chains.

“We needed more protection,” especially during night shifts spent cleaning entire floors alone, explained Mata, who has herself twice experienced sexual harassment on the job. “It’s very dangerous."

It’s also vital for the women doing the work to also sit at the bargaining table, “because sometimes as women, we need something that the men don’t know,” said Mata, whose hotel is currently in bargaining for a new contract.

Keturah Johnson in 2022 became the first queer woman of color to serve as international vice president for flight attendant union AFA-CWA, which is led by Sara Nelson and represents over 50,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines.

People often think of a flight attendant as “a white woman with hair put up in a bun,” and Black flight attendants frequently face microaggressions from managers about their appearance, Johnson said. “It’s happened to me many times because of my natural hair."

And for gender nonconforming flight attendants, being able to wear a uniform that reflects their gender identity is important, Johnson said. So she's leading the fight to update uniform standards to be gender inclusive and permit natural hairstyles, which has resulted in several airlines making changes.

United Airlines, for instance, updated its uniform standards to include gender neutral options in 2021, and Alaska Airlines management adopted gender neutral uniform and appearance standards in 2022, according to AFA. Frontier allowed natural hairstyles for flight attendants in 2021, and this year implemented standardized pricing for all uniforms regardless of size or gender.

“We’re not just there to serve Diet Coke. And so it’s our job to make sure that flight attendants are represented and seen just as they are,” Johnson said. “The world is changed now.”

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Unite Here Local 2 leader María Mata stands for a portrait in front of the W Hotel on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

Unite Here Local 2 leader María Mata stands for a portrait in front of the W Hotel on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Juliana Yamada)

Keturah Johnson, international vice president for flight attendant union AFA-CWA, poses for a portrait in her headquarters office, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

Keturah Johnson, international vice president for flight attendant union AFA-CWA, poses for a portrait in her headquarters office, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

Keturah Johnson, international vice president for flight attendant union AFA-CWA, poses by a decades old, outdated poster with rules and uniforms for flight attendants, at her headquarters office, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

An Israeli airstrike hit a mosque in central Gaza and Palestinian officials said at least 19 people were killed early Sunday. Israeli planes also lit up the skyline across the southern suburbs of Beirut, striking what the military said were Hezbollah targets.

The strike in Gaza hit a mosque where displaced people were sheltering near the main hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. Another four people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced people near the town.

The Israeli military said both strikes targeted militants, without providing evidence.

An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue. Hospital records showed that the dead from the strike on the mosque were all men, while another man was wounded.

In Beirut, the strikes reportedly targeted a building near a road leading to Lebanon’s only international airport and another formerly used by the Hezbollah-run broadcaster Al-Manar.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the one-year mark, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest conflict, most of them since Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

Here is the latest:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis issued a new appeal for peace “on every front” is his Sunday Angelus prayer and spoke of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel.

“Brothers and sisters, tomorrow it will be a year since the terrorist attack by Hamas against the people of Israel, to whom I renew my closeness,” the pontiff said. He called for the “immediate liberation" of the hostages still held in Gaza.

The pope called for a day of prayer and fasting on Monday, the first anniversary of the attack - which he said sparked a war that has taken a heavy toll on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

“From that day the Middle East has fallen into worse suffering because of destructive military actions that continue to hit the Palestinian people,” the pontiff said. "It is most of all innocent civilians, they must receive the necessary humanitarian aid.”

The pope repeated his plea for “an immediate ceasefire on every front," including Lebanon.

"Let’s pray for Lebanese people, especially for the people in the south forced to leave their villages.”

TEL AVIV, Israel — Ahead of the anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli military on Sunday displayed thousands of weapons seized from the militant group.

The military, which created the display at a sprawling army base south of Tel Aviv, said it has retrieved more than 5,000 AK-47 assault rifles from Gaza and destroyed double that number, as well as seized thousands of other items including drones, explosives, RPGs, scuba equipment, machine guns, sniper rifles, anti-tank missiles and weapons manufactured both inside Gaza and in Iran, Russia and North Korea.

The army also displayed homemade explosives it said Hamas used to burst through the border barrier on Oct. 7. It said they were crafted specifically after years of studying Israel’s border during years of Hamas-organized violent protests along the fence, including as early as 2018.

“What Hamas did on Oct. 7 was storm Israel with all their abilities at one time,” said military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani. He said that the Israeli military had seized the weapons from Hamas, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, to study the types of weapons used as well as track where they came from.

As Israel prepares for a day of somber memorials marking a year since the attacks, the military said it was increasing troop presence in Israel’s south to protect memorials taking place along the Gaza border.

A large memorial planned by bereaved families was expected to draw a crowd of more than 40,000 in Tel Aviv, but will be broadcast with only direct family members and media in attendance due to warnings from the military of possible rocket attacks from Lebanon.

BEIRUT — The southern suburbs of Beirut were hit by more than 30 strikes overnight, the heaviest bombardment since Sept. 23, when Israel began a significant escalation in its air campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Sunday.

The targets included a gas station on the main highway leading to the Beirut airport and a warehouse for medical supplies, the agency said.

Some of the overnight strikes set off a long series of explosions, suggesting that ammunition stores may have been hit.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron called for “a halt to arms exports for use in Gaza,” saying it's urgent to avoid escalating tensions in the region, his office said.

Macron drew strong criticism from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by saying "the priority is … that we stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza.” He made the comments in an interview with France Inter radio, which was recorded on Tuesday and aired Saturday.

France doesn’t deliver any weapons to Israel, Macron said.

Netanyahu released a video statement in which he called out the French president by name and referred to such calls as a “disgrace.”

In a statement, Macron’s office said “France is Israel’s unfailing friend. Mr. Netanyahu’s words are excessive and irrelevant to the friendship between France and Israel.”

“We must return to diplomatic solutions,” it added.

The statement also said that Macron had demonstrated his commitment to Israel's security when France mobilized its military resources in response to the Iranian attack. French authorities did not provided details about France’s role.

Macron has called for an immediate cease-fire in both Gaza and Lebanon.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An apparent Israeli airstrike early Sunday killed at least 18 people in central Gaza, Palestinian medical officials said.

The strike hit a mosque sheltering displaced people near the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah, the hospital said in a statement.

An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the hospital morgue. Hospital records showed that the dead were all men. Another two men were critically wounded, the hospital said.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment about the strike on the mosque.

The latest strikes add to the mounting Palestinian death toll in Gaza, which is now nearing 42,000 according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths, but many of the dead were women and children.

BEIRUT — Powerful new explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs late Saturday as Israel expanded its bombardment in Lebanon, also striking a Palestinian refugee camp deep in the north for the first time as it targeted both Hezbollah and Hamas fighters.

Thousands of people in Lebanon, including Palestinian refugees, continued to flee the widening conflict in the region, while rallies were held around the world marking the approaching anniversary of the start of the war in Gaza.

The strong explosions began near midnight after Israel’s military urged residents to evacuate areas in Beirut’s Haret Hreik and Choueifat neighborhoods. AP video showed the blasts illuminating the densely populated southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. They followed a day of sporadic strikes and the nearly continuous buzz of reconnaissance drones.

Israel’s military confirmed it was striking targets near Beirut and said about 30 projectiles had crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

A man checks the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Emergency workers inspect a building that was hit in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Israeli soldiers pray at a staging area in northern Israel, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

An Israeli soldier prays at a staging area in northern Israel, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)

People check the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Smoke rises from a destroyed building at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Mourners gather around the bodies of Palestinian men who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)