Latino workers represent a large and growing share of the U.S. workforce. But even with the highest employment rates in the United States, Latinos face a number of barriers to accessing good jobs and economic security. Their median earnings are lower than those of their Black, White, and Asian American counterparts. And along with Black workers, Latino workers tend to be especially vulnerable to losing their jobs amid economic contractions.

What’s more, insufficient bargaining power, gaps in legal protections, discrimination, and social norms all can cluster Latino workers into jobs that pay low wages, offer little in terms of employer-sponsored benefits, and rank high in labor law violations. Unions and labor organizers, however, have long pushed back against these obstacles, delivering important gains for both Latino and non-Latino workers.

In the mid-20th century, for example, the late union activist Emma Tenayuca fought for fair wages, advocated for workers’ right to unionize, and led what continues to be one of the largest strikes in U.S. history. In the early 1960s, civil rights activists and organizers Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez co-founded what is now the United Farm Workers. As one of the first and longest-lasting farmworkers unions in the country, the UFW played an important role in securing better working conditions in the agricultural sector—in which Latinos disproportionately are employed—including regulations that protect workers against the harms of heat and pesticides.

Then, between the late 1980s and early 2000s, the Justice for Janitors movement achieved better pay, greater access to benefits, and union contracts for many of these workers at a time when domestic outsourcing began to greatly deteriorate job quality in janitorial services. Janitorial services is an occupation in which Latinos represent almost a third of the overall workforce.

More recently, through both worker organizing and policymaking efforts, Chief Officer of the California Labor Federation Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher helped secure overtime protections for farmworkers and improve labor standards for fast-food workers in California. And in the past few years, unions maintained wages and protected workers against job loss as the COVID-19 crisis launched the economy U.S. economy into a recession.

Read the full article about Latino workers by Carmen Sanchez Cumming at Washington Center for Equitable Growth.