By Fred Redmond
Everywhere you look, everything costs too much. Families are stretching every paycheck to cover soaring grocery bills. Too many are struggling to make rent. Child care, health care and gas bills continue to strain household budgets. Working people are doing everything right, yet too many are still falling behind.
For Latina workers, this crisis is compounded by a persistent and unjust pay gap. That’s why we observe Latina Equal Pay Day on Oct. 8 this year. It brings attention to the fact that among full-time, year-round workers, Latinas earned just 60 cents in 2025 for every dollar earned by white men. That wage gap isn’t just a statistic—it means smaller paychecks, fewer opportunities to build wealth, less financial security and harder choices about how to provide for their families.
Latinas deserve equal pay for equal work. Full stop. Anything less hurts working families and weakens our economy. A union contract can help level the playing field.
The evidence is clear. Hispanic workers overall receive a large wage boost from union membership, with a 16.4% wage premium compared with nonunion Latino workers. Latinas in a union earn about $15,288 more per year than Latinas who are not in a union. Most importantly, union contracts also help narrow the gender pay gap: Women working full time in union jobs earn 86.2 cents for every dollar earned by men who are union members—a significantly smaller gap than among nonunion workers.
Negotiated contracts replace arbitrary decisions with clear wage scales, transparent pay systems and enforceable workplace standards. Instead of leaving pay to bias or favoritism, union contracts establish fair standards that workers can enforce.
A report from the Economic Policy Institute finds that strengthening workers’ rights to organize and increasing union density would significantly reduce racial wage gaps while strengthening our economy and our democracy. Communities with higher union membership invest more in public education, are more likely to expand access to health care and provide stronger unemployment protections when people lose their jobs.
Our labor movement has always understood that civil rights and workers’ rights are inseparable. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that truth when he stood with striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Today, we carry that legacy forward by fighting for workplaces where every worker is respected, protected and paid fairly.
Latina Equal Pay Day should not simply remind us how far we still have to go. It should remind us that we already know how to make progress. Progress happens when workers organize. It happens when we bargain together. And it happens when we stand in solidarity with one another. That’s why we must elect leaders who will fight to protect workers’ rights, strengthen unions and defend our democracy.
We must recommit ourselves to building an economy where every worker is valued, every paycheck reflects the dignity of work and every Latina receives the equal pay she has long deserved. Because when Latinas are paid fairly, every family can afford to build a better future.
Fred Redmond, the highest-ranking African American labor official in history, is the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation representing 65 unions and nearly 15 million workers.
