TEAMSTER.ORG | The Teamsters have repeatedly written about the advantages workers receive from being in a union. That includes earning more, enjoying better benefits and more frequently having pensions, vacations and paid sick leave, than their non-union brethren. But a new report says there’s a real big union edge, one that anyone investing in the stock market would love to get.
The document, by Frank Manzo, director of the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and Dr. Robert Bruno, director of the Labor Education Service at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, states that for every dollar an Illinois worker pays in union dues, he or she gets $6.12 back in better wages and benefits.
That’s a “return on investment” – a common term in the financial world – of more than 600 percent, far above what investors get from stocks, bonds and mutual funds.