According to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, women will be the majority of unionized workers by 2020.

How's an abundance of estrogen changing things? "Because of women, we don't just talk about raising wages, but about creating family friendly workplaces with sick leave, child care, and family and medical leave," said Change to Win Chair and SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger. "We don't just talk about out-of-control insurance costs, but about the fact that women pay more than men strictly because of their gender."

Some of the report's other findings:

Education:

• Nearly 40 percent percent of all union workers have college degrees. Almost half (49.4 percent) of union women had at least a four-year college degree.
  
• More educated workers were more likely to be unionized than less-educated workers, a reversal from 25 years ago.

Public Sector & Growth

• Just under half of all union members come from the public sector, up from just over one-third in 1983.
  
• Union ranks have increased slightly over the past two years, and members now represent 12.4 percent of the nation's work force.

Diversity:

• Latinos are the fastest growing ethnic group in the labor movement.
  
• About one-in-eight (12.6 percent) of union workers is an immigrant, up from one-in-twelve in 1994
  
• In 1983, the majority (51.7 percent) of all union workers was white men; by 2008, white men were only 38.1 percent of the unionized workforce.
  
• The typical union worker was 45 years old, or about 7 years older than in 1983. The most heavily unionized age group was in the age range of 55-64.

"The view that the typical union worker is a white male manufacturing worker may have been correct a quarter of a century ago, but it's not an accurate description of those in today's labor movement," said John Schmitt, a CEPR Senior Economist and an author of the report. Read the study.

"Unions and Upward Mobility for Service-Sector Employees," a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shows that nationally, unionization raises service workers' pay 10.1 percent (about $2.00 per hour), compared to non-union service workers, and increases the likelihood that the worker will have health insurance and a pension. Service sector jobs include healthcare and food service workers, housekeepers, janitors and childcare providers.

The vast majority of jobs in this country are now in the service sector, and data from this study demonstrates that service sector workers reap benefits as much from unionization as workers in manufacturing do. In Pennsylvania, for example, more than 77 percent of the workforce is in service-sector jobs, and the unionization rate in those jobs is 14.7 percent. The average wage for unionized workers in the service sector in PA is $19.31, while for non-union members it is $14.27.

The impact of unions in low-wage occupations was even more significant. For workers in the 15 lowest-paying occupations, union membership raised wages by 15.5 percent. The likelihood of having health insurance increased by about 26 percentage points, and the likelihood of having an employer-sponsored pension increased by roughly 23 percentage points.

"Unions give the biggest boost to workers in low-paying occupations because these are the workers that have the least bargaining power in the labor market," said John Schmitt, a Senior Economist at CEPR. "Unionization can turn what would otherwise be low-paying jobs with no benefits into middle-class jobs."

Read the full study here.