The limits of equality bargaining in the USA

Introduction

Women make up nearly half of the US workforce, and with rising education levels are a critical backbone of US employment as well as an important source of income for their families (Boushey and O’Leary, 2009). In 2008, 59% of all women and 71% of women with children were in the labor force (Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 2009). Eighty percent of couples had both members employed outside the home in 2008, and on average, women in these dual-earner couples provide 45% of their total household income (Matos and Galinsky, 2011). Despite their greater involvement in the workforce, women remain heavily involved in the home. For example, mothers spend the same number of weekday hours with their children (3.8) in 2008 as they did in 1977, and the majority of married/partnered women report doing most of the cooking (70%) and cleaning (73%) in their households (Matos and Galinsky, 2011).

Given the work and family demands US women face, collective bargaining has the potential to deliver policies which can ease these demands, give women a voice at work, and help women gain more equal treatment in the workplace to reflect their growing importance in the labor market. This is often referred to as equality bargaining, the function and execution of which in the US is poorly understood and lacks analysis. Moreover, changing workforce demographics and the erosion of traditional gender roles over the past several decades have led to a complicated and dynamic environment, consequently challenging researchers to rethink what constitutes equality bargaining and demanding a fresh perspective. Using interview data from national union leaders in major US unions, we examine the state and process of equality bargaining in the US. We focus on the extent to which US unions are an effective force for gender equality bargaining and identify factors that have affected unions’ abilities to bargain for provisions such as family-friendly policies, which still primarily benefit women. We demonstrate how the US policy environment, decentralized bargaining structures, and regional differences regarding gender roles affect the ability of unions to bargain for gender equality. We also discuss union successes in gaining gender equality provisions and strategies used to facilitate gender equality bargaining in the US environment.

What is equality bargaining?

Equality bargaining is typically defined in the context of gender equality. For Colling and Dickens (1998), the dimensions of equality bargaining are explicitly focused on gender and include (1) the negotiation of provisions beneficial to women, (2) equality awareness in negotiators with regard to gender-based pay and opportunities, and (3) the inclusion of gender disadvantage in the negotiation of workplace change (i.e. including a gendered perspective in workplace decisions beyond bargaining). Most of the equality bargaining literature in Europe and Australia has focused on these gender-based dimensions. Topics include integrating gender equality awareness into the negotiation process and the bargaining agenda as well as achieving bargaining outcomes that improve pay equity, equal opportunities, and reduce gender discrimination (Colling and Dickens, 1998; Heery, 2006; Kirton and Greene, 2006).

More recently, however, what researchers consider equality bargaining issues has deepened to encompass additional, primarily female-focused issues beyond pay equity (such as family-friendly policies and sexual harassment). In addition, it has expanded outward to include bargaining which serves not only the needs of women, but also the needs of other groups suffering from discrimination. Briskin’s (2006) three dimensions of equality bargaining account for this perspective and are broader than those proposed by Colling and Dickens (1998). Briskin’s (2006) dimensions are (1) the inclusion of no-discrimination clauses, (2) the identification of specific areas of concern for each relevant population group subject to inequity, and (3) ‘equity mainstreaming,’ that is, recognizing the equity implications of all aspects of collective agreements. Thus, while the majority of equality bargaining research is focused on gender equity issues, some researchers have considered equality bargaining more inclusively. This broader conceptualization includes issues which affect women less exclusively, yet still have important implications for women’s equality in a more modern workforce where traditional gender roles and gendered jobs have eroded.

A key part of our analysis focuses on family-friendly policies as vital practices that fit this broader conceptualization of equality bargaining. Family-friendly policies indirectly support gender equity by attacking the notion of a workplace organized along the lines of an ‘ideal worker’ – one who is unencumbered by the demands of domestic life and solely focused on work. The ideal worker workplace is an expression of the male breadwinner model, where the husband serves as breadwinner (focused on work) and the wife as homemaker (focused on caring for the home) (Williams, 2000). These family-friendly policies also primarily benefit women because, as outlined above, women still spend more time on average in caretaking roles than do men. We will show that even if these policies were equally beneficial to men and women, they are not always perceived as ‘family’ policies by union members, particularly those in rural, culturally traditional, and more male-dominated local unions. Family-friendly policies are an important part of equality bargaining because they help break down the idea of the male breadwinner in favor of a model in which men and women are equally involved in the work domain. They not only provide women with additional, broader flexibility, but also make it easier for men to take on more traditionally female family demands.

Literature review and theoretical framework

The literature on collective bargaining and gender equality shows that labor unions in the US have long been advocates for gender pay equity, comparable worth, and strategies for eliminating sex discrimination in organizations (Bowles and McGinn, 2008). Moreover, there is evidence that unionized organizations are associated with lower gender pay differentials (Benedict, 1999; Blau and Kahn, 2007; Stephan and Gerlach, 2005). This result is not surprising as unions tend to increase wage equality across occupational groups, particularly raising the wages of lower paid occupations in which women are disproportionately represented (Elvira and Saporta, 2001). Our interviews corroborate this research as we heard few concerns regarding gender pay equity. However, to understand how effective collective bargaining can be in delivering other family-friendly gender equality practices, such as paid leave and flexible schedules, we need to understand how these practices fit within the overall collective bargaining process.

Thus, we consider equality bargaining in the context of the model of collective bargaining developed by Kochan and Katz (1988). As seen at the top of Figure 1, union and management have goals and strategies for collective bargaining. These goals and strategies are shaped by the external environment (e.g. state of the economy and national laws) and interact with the bargaining process to produce bargaining outcomes, such as family-friendly policies and practices. The bargaining process is also influenced by workplace-level factors such as work organization and employee goals. Bargaining structure is also shaped by the external environment and interacts with strategic and workplace-level factors. The Kochan and Katz (1988) model emphasizes that bargaining outcomes are not just the result of collective negotiations, but are influenced by a multitude of other factors. Just like traditional bargaining outcomes, achieving gender equality contract provisions or changes in the gender representation in the bargaining process is the result of strategies, trade-offs, bargaining structure, and the degree of bargaining power possessed by unions. OPEN IN VIEWER

To further break down the dimensions of gender equality bargaining in the US, we draw on the work of Williamson (2010). Based on the existing literature and several case studies in Australia, Williamson developed an equality bargaining continuum to classify the state of equality bargaining outcomes as narrow, broad, or transformational. Narrow equality bargaining, based on Heery (2006), is focused on one or just a small handful of gender and family issues. Broad equality bargaining, based on Colling and Dickens (1998), repairs structural inequalities through a formal analysis which identifies gender inequalities and then negotiates a plan to eliminate them. This form of equality bargaining goes beyond addressing women’s caretaking needs by correcting imbalances in organizational structure itself. Additionally, broad equality bargaining is characterized by an awareness of equality issues across all bargaining topics. Finally, transformational bargaining expands beyond the needs of women to other populations and uses new and innovative provisions to address equality issues, including the establishment of employee-based equality monitoring. Williamson argues that transformational bargaining is most effective in pushing the domestic and work domains toward equality across all population groups. Importantly, placing different equality bargaining structures on this continuum helps researchers identify where an organization falls in its practices relative to others.

Williamson also identifies facilitative and inhibitive factors that operate at various levels and shape bargaining outcomes on the narrow-transformational continuum. The economic climate and public policies which favor businesses or limit the power of unions are inhibitive factors at the national regulatory level. At the industry level, a loose labor market can create a lack of competition for skilled employees and reduce pressure for equality provisions, as organizations are better able to attract skilled workers without them. Powerful industry business leaders and weak industry-level bargaining structures can also inhibit equality bargaining at the industry level by reducing bargaining power. At the organizational level, low levels of trust between negotiators, union leaders focused only on the needs of the generally male majority, and a lack of membership knowledge of family-friendly policies can inhibit equality bargaining. In contrast, the opposite conditions can facilitate equality bargaining.

Existing research provides evidence of the effects of these inhibitive and facilitative factors as well as the factors identified in the Kochan and Katz (1988) model. Gerstel and Clawson (2001) point to several factors that may inhibit or facilitate making family-friendly practices a union bargaining goal. These include structural characteristics of the union such as member expectations, gender of members, gender of leaders, and union strength (Crocker and Clawson, 2012). In a Workplace Directorate report from Canada, Kumar and Murray (2002) show that when unions prioritize equality issues and make them part of their bargaining goals, they are more likely to succeed in bargaining for them.

Much of the gender equality bargaining research in Europe supports the view that unions have been slow to include gender equity provisions as part of their bargaining strategies and demands (Blackett and Sheppard, 2003; Dickens, 2000, 2007). This research emphasizes that a mere inclusion of women in the bargaining process is insufficient to accomplish transformational outcomes (Colling and Dickens, 1998; Dickens, 1997, 2000; Hantarais and Ackers, 2005). In the context of the Kochan and Katz (1988) and Williamson (2010) frameworks, this line of research suggests that to be truly transformative, gender equality bargaining cannot be only part of a union’s strategy and goals, but it must also be backed by the membership at the workplace and given proper weight and support in the bargaining process.

Consistent with the Kochan and Katz (1988) model, research has also examined the influence of external factors on gender equality bargaining. While these factors are less proximal to bargaining outcomes, they play a major contextual role in shaping the entire bargaining process and include a number of facilitative and inhibitive factors (Williamson, 2010). Dickens (2000) found that, in Europe, union bargaining decisions were linked to mandated public policy standards. Similarly, in Australia, recent policy changes such as paid parental leave have attempted to meet some needs of the increasingly female labor force, thereby changing priorities in the bargaining process (Baird and Williamson, 2009, 2010, 2011). Rigby and O’Brien-Smith (2010) compared different union strategies of intervention in work–life issues in the UK retailing and media sectors, and through this the impact of external factors on gender equality bargaining such as industry differences and the role of legislation. They concluded that union political activism and its resulting legislation were effective in leveraging more parental leave at major companies.

In their comparison of insurance and social work organizations in the UK and France, Gregory and Milner (2009) recognized that gender politics, national working time regulations, and the characteristics of organizations facilitated union engagement in flexibility issues. These align with different portions of the Kochan and Katz model: union goals and strategies, external factors, and management goals and strategies. They show how national working time and social policies, as well as European policy, protect and encourage union activity on work–life issues. While they acknowledge the role of women within unions as important for initiating work–life issues, they find bargaining outcomes are dependent on bargaining structure and leverage.

By combining the theoretical perspectives of Kochan and Katz (1988) and Williamson (2010), we have a foundation to assess the extent of gender equality bargaining in the US. This foundation helps us identify the key facilitative and inhibitive internal and external factors and resulting union strategies that shape equality bargaining outcomes. Given that very little research has examined US unions through the equality bargaining lens, our study seeks to provide insight into the phenomenon of gender equality bargaining in the US and help us better understand its positioning and priority in the US union movement. Next, we discuss the US bargaining environment and articulate how the facilitative and inhibitive factors work both internally within unions and externally in the environment outside of unions.

The US bargaining context

An exploration of facilitative and inhibitive factors on one of our key bargaining outcomes, family-friendly policies, informs our interview questions and provides a context to better understand the strategic decisions US unions make with regard to gender equality bargaining. As in most developed countries, the global economy has weakened US labor bargaining power through the expansion of the global labor market and increased market competition for products and services. What is unique about the US, compared with European countries or Australia, is the lack of strong facilitative factors for family-friendly policies at the national level. As the classic liberal market economy, the US relies on markets with minimal government intervention to solve employment issues (Hall and Soskice, 2001). The prevailing point of view in the US is that markets are generally competitive and function best if labor and management are left to maximize benefits and profits. Thus, national work–family policies are few, for it is believed that government intervention would simply impair the otherwise efficient functioning of the market (Block et al., 2004: 103–104).

An important national-level inhibitive policy is the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which governs the structure on work hours in the US and reinforces an ideal worker model by restricting time flexibility. The FLSA sets overtime thresholds by defining a regular workweek as 40 hours and requiring workers covered by the law to be paid 150% of their usual hourly wage for work above that threshold. The intent of the 1930s law was to restrict long hours of current employees and increase job opportunities. However, the FLSA does not address the needs of the current workforce. It is estimated that the FLSA only covers 6 in 10 workers who are paid an hourly wage (Boushey, 2011). It does not cover low-paid salary workers and places no limit on overtime work. Thus, workers can be forced to work overtime, often exacerbating work–family conflict. In addition, the fixed hours threshold for overtime premiums serves to restrict a variety of flexible working time options that may benefit both employees and employers.

Legislation on paid annual leave, paid sick days, or the right to request a flexible schedule is commonly seen as a facilitative factor (Williamson, 2010). But, consistent with the liberal market economy logic, the US provides no legislative entitlement to leave and flexibility practices. It is assumed that employers will offer these arrangements if there is sufficient demand, and they are compelled to do so by a competitive labor market. This does occur to some extent, since according to the National Compensation Survey, 77% of all wage and salary workers in the private sector have access to some annual leave. However, the average length of paid annual leave for all workers is only 8.9 days after one year, 13.5 days after five years, and 16.1 days after 10 years of service (BLS, 2007).

The main piece of facilitative family-friendly legislation in the US is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which provides 12 weeks unpaid leave for employee illness, care for a new child (adopted, foster, or birth), or care for a sick family member. The law only covers about half of the US workforce because it excludes workers in firms with fewer than 50 employees, those who have been with their employers less than one year, and employees who have worked fewer than 1,200 hours over the past year at their firms (Waldfogel, 2001). The FMLA is the key source of leave for those who have no guarantee of time off to care for their families’ needs. However, many women and low-wage workers are less likely to be covered because they tend to work part-time and in small businesses. In addition, the fact that the leave is unpaid makes it difficult for low- and middle-income families to use it (O'Leary, 2007).

Employers are generally not stepping in to fill the gaps in FMLA coverage. According to a Department of Labor Survey, only 24% of US employers offer paid maternity-related leave of some duration, and about 20% of US employers offer no paid or unpaid maternity-related leave of any kind. A 2006 National Compensation Survey found that only 7% of US establishments offer paid family leave. This includes leave to care for a family member, including a newborn child, which is separate from paid annual leave, sick days, personal leave, or short-term disability. Sixty-eight percent of US establishments offered unpaid family leave (Ray et al., 2009). This is critical as research suggests that an organization’s openness to more transformational and broader gender policies is an important factor in the success of going beyond policy and addressing gendered organizational structures (Gilbert and Secker, 1995; Hart, 2002; Horrigan, 1988).

There are also limited state-level policies in five states that facilitate maternity leave through universal public programs for short-term and temporary disability insurance. This type of disability leave is funded jointly by employers and employees, and in some cases exclusively by employees. In addition, some form of paid family leave is found in California, Washington, and New Jersey. These programs generally offer five to six weeks of partial wage replacement through state insurance programs (Boushey et al., 2008). These state-level programs provide some degree of facilitation of bargaining over family-friendly policies. The public campaigns to pass the legislation raise awareness while the policies provide a floor from which unions can bargain for greater paid leave benefits.

Current policies at the national and state levels in the US are weak facilitators, and in the case of the FLSA can even inhibit family-friendly policies. Factors at the industry and organizational levels that can facilitate or inhibit family-friendly practices include labor market conditions as well as the bargaining structure/power of labor and management. In the US, these factors are also largely inhibitive. In the current environment of high unemployment and a slack labor market, US workers and their unions lack strong bargaining power to push a family-friendly agenda. Threats of job and health coverage loss can drive issues of flexibility off the bargaining table. The lack of a strong floor of labor standards and the lack of a universal health care system work against unions interested in bargaining for more schedule flexibility or paid leaves as core economic issues are often prioritized higher.

In addition, the US has a decentralized bargaining structure where most collective bargaining negotiations take place at the company or establishment level; this is associated with low bargaining power. Research comparing Australia and France as relatively decentralized, and centralized bargaining systems supports this idea (Meng and Meurs, 2004). While some research suggests that decentralized bargaining systems allow for more flexible union strategies (Gilbert and Secker, 1995), others argue that the combined strength of coordinated, centralized union efforts might be more beneficial (Heery, 2006; Whitehouse, 1992).

Also at the union level, empirical research suggests that gender dynamics of unions can influence gender equality bargaining (Bowles and McGinn, 2008), as unions themselves can be gendered organizations (Bittman and Wajcman, 2000; Creese, 1995; Danieli, 2006; Jones, 2002). Studies outside of the US have found that female-dominated unions are more likely to prioritize and are more successful in obtaining family leave and other non-pay provisions beneficial to women (Heery and Kelly, 1988; May et al., 2003).

Method

Given our goal to examine the state of equality bargaining in the US, we chose an adapted phenomenological qualitative methodology. Phenomonological research describes the experience of a concept or a phenomenon for several individuals (Cresswell, 2007). Though this methodology is typically used for more conscious human experiences, it was well-suited to the current research question of exploring the phenomenon of equality bargaining in the US context. It is important to note that although we believe these interviews have captured the core of the phenomenon at the national level, other smaller unions or local chapters may have a different experience and thus our interviews should be considered with these limitations in mind.

We interviewed eight union leaders from seven major national US unions and one of the major union federations. These unions represent a variety of industries and occupations and are some of the largest in the country. Each semi-structured interview lasted approximately 40 minutes and was comprised of open-ended questions in which both the participant and interviewer were free to expand. Participants were given the questions in advance. Seven of the eight participants were females, while the sole male had female representatives present during the interview. Seven of the eight participants were in national-level leadership roles regarding promotion of diversity in their unions and thus in a good position to discuss the nature of the phenomenon of equality bargaining. The participants were able to share information about both top-level strategy and policy around gender and family-friendly provisions as well as patterns in the activity of local union chapters.

We used existing theory and literature to inform our interview questions and help us determine which internal and external factors may be particularly inhibitive or facilitative to equality bargaining. The semi-structured and open nature of the questions both allowed participants to elaborate on their responses and aided us in identifying important contextual factors affecting the use of equality bargaining which were absent from previous literature. Similarly, this methodology allowed us to identify external and internal facilitative and inhibitive factors unique to the US which may have otherwise been more difficult to identify. As we progressed through the interviews, we asked additional questions about emerging themes and experiences to confirm their typicality. The questions covered participants’ perceptions on various factors internal and external to the union discussed earlier and the union’s general treatment of equality bargaining.

After the completion of interviews, we horizontalized the data. This process involves identifying and collecting significant statements and quotes which provide an understanding of the experience of the phenomenon in question (Moustakas, 1994). Horizontalization helped identify important experiences of the phenomenon of equality bargaining which could then be linked together in thematic clusters of meaning. Specifically, it showed us the most common elements in descriptions of the state of equality bargaining and therefore the most fundamental description of the shared experience within the context of US union leadership. From these themes, described later in the text, we generated a diagram of internal and external facilitative and inhibitive factors as well as the strategies unions use to adjust to those factors in order to push for gender equality bargaining.

Results

Discussion

The Kochan and Katz (1988) conceptual model in Figure 1 is useful in showing how elements of the bargaining process influence equality bargaining outcomes in the US. Facilitative factors within the external environment certainly shape labor union goals at the strategic level. The rise of female labor force participation to an average of 71% (BLS, 2009) and female membership within the union movement to 45% (Schmitt, 2008) has contributed to the increase of female leadership at the national level that is consistent with equality bargaining objectives. One manufacturing union leader we interviewed discussed how women had increasingly become part of the leadership team within the national union, but unfortunately this had not been duplicated at the local union level. This was consistent across all of the unions we interviewed in their emphasis of the autonomy of local unions except for one, which represented a large number of women and so had more gender-diverse locals. As mentioned earlier, all but one of the unions we interviewed had established women’s committees that monitor and promote women’s issues within the union. However, these committees have limited influence on bargaining agendas at the local and national levels. For example, one union leader explained that their women’s advisory board ‘is truly advisory in nature. It doesn’t have any power of its own.’

With regard to inhibitive factors within the external environment, the lack of federally mandated paid leave or right to request a flexible schedule requires unions to expend bargaining capital to obtain leave or flexible schedule practices. This brings such family-friendly provisions in direct competition with other bargaining goals such as health care benefits and wages. Our interviews indicate that family-friendly practices continue to take a backseat to health care and wage demands. This finding shows how the lack of a broader public health care insurance policy can impact equality bargaining by squeezing out family-friendly practices from the bargaining agenda. Moreover, unlike in other countries, the inhibitive federal policy environment provides no institutional push to encourage firms to adopt or agree to family-friendly practices.

The decentralized bargaining structure in the US, spanning the functional level in the Kochan and Katz (1988) model, makes it difficult for unions to translate strategic goals consistent with equality bargaining to outcomes at the workplace level. The lack of industry-wide agreements restricts the ability to negotiate broad gender equality provisions at a peak level. Unions must rely on company and local agreements to spread equality bargaining provisions. The lower level of bargaining power within decentralized bargaining structures contributes to very uneven and weak coverage of equality bargaining outcomes.

In Table 1, we identify the key inhibitive and facilitative factors both external and internal to the union and the corresponding way in which unions strategically respond to these factors from an equality bargaining perspective. The first column lists inhibitive factors both internal and external to unions and the second column the corresponding strategies we currently observed. The third column lists facilitative factors internal and external to the union along with corresponding strategies in the fourth column.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Key contextual factors affecting equality bargaining and strategic responses.

	Inhibitive		Facilitative
	Factors	Union strategy	Factors	Union strategy
External to unions	• Weak national policy for flexible work practices  • Decentralized bargaining structure	• Engage external organizations and build coalitions for policy change  • No strategy observed at external level	• Active public policy movements  • Increasing number of women in labor market  • Increasing family diversity in labor market	• Coalition building with like-minded groups  • Increase women leadership roles  • Emphasize family nature of family-friendly policies
Internal to unions	• Male- dominated local unions  • Local unions with traditional values  • Lack of female leadership at some local unions	• Promote awareness of women as part of the union movement  • Downplay family-friendly policies' specific benefits to women  • Increase women leadership roles at the top	• Leadership supportive of women’s needs  • Increasing proportion of female workforce  • Greater general male understanding of female needs	• Promotion of female leadership  • Development of women’s committees  • Greater representation for women in bargaining committees  • Appeal to understanding in promotion of policy (e.g. ‘how would this help your daughter?’)

This table also shows where union responses have been weak and strong. Weak national policy for flexible work practices and lack of public health care are inhibitive factors external to the union. Unions have responded to this by engaging in political activism to enact changes to laws around work–family policy. For example, unions have been strong advocates of paid family leave initiatives in various states. The California Labor Federation was the main sponsor of the California paid family leave program. Although union efforts have helped pass paid family leave in several states (California, New Jersey, Washington, and the District of Columbia), there has been little change in federal legislation. Unions have not been successful in getting a public health system that would reduce health insurance benefits as a bargaining priority. Decentralized bargaining structures are embedded into the US bargaining system and unions have not been able nor seem willing to invest capital in trying to achieve more centralized bargaining structures.

There are a number of inhibitive factors internal to the union that are related to conditions within local unions and exacerbated by the decentralized union structure, such as male-dominated membership, the lack of female leaders, and differences in gender values across regions. Conferences by women’s committees help train female local union members for leadership and help promote awareness of women as part of the union movement. Yet the extent to which theses conferences and training are successful in getting women into leadership is limited.

Despite the dominance of inhibitive factors, unions do have some facilitative factors, such as demographic shifts in the labor market, more women in national union leadership positions than in the past, active interest among advocacy groups in paid family and paid sick leave legislation, and casting gender equality as a family issue. The interest among advocacy groups in pushing for paid family leave and paid sick leave legislation at the state and federal levels gives unions partners in the fight to pass such legislation. Progress has been modest, with success in only a few states, but interest remains high. The increase of women in the labor force and the diversity of family arrangements have moved family-friendly flexibility practices up the bargaining agenda. Internal union facilitative factors are present as well and provide some encouragement. Women’s committees and conferences encourage greater female leadership within unions. The increase of women union members also increases the likelihood of women serving on bargaining committees. These factors and changing attitudes within unions to the needs of female members are positive forces for equality bargaining. However, as our interviews reveal, the inhibitive factors remain dominant and progress remains slow.

Conclusion

To summarize, US unions face a strongly inhibitive environment when pursuing equality bargaining primarily due to union decentralization and a lack of national family-friendly legislation. Some existing facilitative factors provide a push to unions to establish more equality bargaining provisions, but these facilitative factors tend to be slow-moving, operating from the top down. While all the union officials we interviewed were favorable toward gender equality bargaining, because of these inhibiting factors most had limited success engaging in it. Unions have adopted a number of strategies to try and deal with these inhibitive factors and take advantage of the facilitative factors.

We conclude that the majority of unions can be described as narrow on the Williamson equality bargaining continuum as there are relatively few gender equality practices and many unions are still fighting for representation of women at the local level. Far from being able to integrate gender issues into the day-to-day operations of the union, and despite a commitment to women at the upper levels, unions continue to struggle with broader issues such as wages and benefits, and this limits the attention placed on gender issues. Given how important decentralized bargaining structure is to our results, we suggest that future research should more closely examine the differences at the local level. We interviewed high level national union officials and thus could not fully capture the role of local diversity or adequately parse out how demographic differences are related to local union attitudes. A better understanding of these dynamics may help unions better translate their top–down female leadership into local female leadership and enhance the prospects of gaining more family-friendly policies for their workforces.