D.C. Betty Friedan, distinguished visiting professor at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and Lois Gray, ILR professor of management and labor relations, co-moderated the symposium, sponsored by the Ford Foundation and Cornell's Institute for Women and Work. Representing a union perspective, Laden explained that SEIU organizes the lowest of the low-income workers, from janitors to health care workers, with its membership numbering over 1.3 million and growing. She said 80 percent of these workers have very low incomes, no health coverage and, as parents, spend a lot less time with their kids.
Unions help settle grievances, raise wages, keep people off welfare and stabilize communities.
Generally disputing the fact the U.S. income gap is growing and that the gender wage gap is due to discrimination, Kosters argued that discussing the differences in wages between women and men and between the bottom tier of income earners and the higher brackets only addresses the beginning of the story. Bernstein challenged Kosters' thinking on the gender wage gap. Even when you control for differences between men and women in age, education and experience, for instance, he told the audience, the wage gap shrinks from about 25 percent to about 12 to 13 percent. Addressing the diminished narrowing of the gender wage gap, Bernstein used income and policy data from the 1980s to argue that public policy advocates should recognize that low- wage women are very dependent on the minimum wage and it directly impacts their fortunes. She discussed studies by Blau and Kahn that have found that the differences in wage structure among different countries may reveal an even stronger influence on the gender wage gap than specific gender differences.