American Notes Causes

Should the Government try to set similar pay scales for jobs that, while dissimilar, ostensibly require equivalent skill, responsibility and effort? Next week the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is expected to approve a draft report that calls the concept, known as comparable worth, "profoundly and irretrievably flawed."

Federal law states clearly that workers in the same job cannot be paid differently because of their sex or race. Comparable worth would take these guarantees of equal pay for equal work a step further: workers in such traditionally male jobs as trucker and accountant, for example, would no longer make 30% to 40% more than holders of traditionally female jobs like secretary and nurse. Commission Chairman Clarence Pendleton and other opponents argue that comparable worth laws would involve the Government in a morass of subjective judgments about salary considerations best left to the free market; Democratic Representative Mary Rose Oakar of Ohio, a proponent, dismisses these objections as "hysterical responses (that) detract from a reasoned public debate of sex-based wage discrimination." The draft report concludes that enforcing comparable worth laws would require massive Government intervention into the economy and lead to "a radical reordering of our economic system."