Equal pay for equal work - Misplaced Pages

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Equal pay for equal work is the concept that individuals doing the same work should receive the same remuneration regardless of their sex, race, sexuality, nationality or anything else.

It is most commonly used in a context of sexual discrimination, as equal pay for women. Equal Pay does not simply relate to basic salary but also to the full range of benefits, non salary payments, bonuses and allowances that are paid.

Explanation

The principle reasons that men get paid more than women is salary negotiation. Men are four times more likely than women to negotiate a higher salary, amounting to approximately $500,000 USD in lost revenue by age 60 for the average women. In addition, when women do negotiate their salaries, they are more pessimistic and negotiate an average of 30% less than men.

Many noble ideas are either difficult or impossible to implement in free societies. Unfree societies point up their successes in this area (using labels like "Social Justice," and so forth) however when government controls prices, wages, industry, and the media these claims are easily made. Advocates of Equal Pay are quick to broadcast the disparity between women's pay and men's pay, but there are valid cultural reasons for it which have little to do with discriminatory sentiment or conduct. In any case, government actions to correct gender pay disparity, such as investigations of pay discrimination which compel employers to justify compensation to workers, serve to interfere with the substantially benevolent system of voluntary exchange.

The fundamental issue is that the employer is the owner of the job, not the government or the employee. The employer negotiates the job and pays according to performance, not according to job duties. Substantially similar job duties can be and are usually compensated differently because of performance rather than degrees and years of experience. A private business would not want to lose its best performers by compensating them less and can ill afford paying its lower performers higher because the overall productivity will decline. There is no need for government intervention because the two parties (employer/employee) are negotiating at will and the competition does not allow for substantial inequities.

There are also specific affirmative defenses to the criticism above that government is forcing employers to pay less qualified workers the same as superior workers. The EPA’s four affirmative defenses allows unequal pay for equal work when the wages are set "pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) ... any other factor other than sex" If an employer can prove that a pay differential exists because of one of these factors, there is no liability.

Equal pay has also been criticised as focusing too much on women. The pay gap between ethnic minorities (Black and Asian) and white workers is often much higher than that of women and men, this is partictularly true in the UK.

Advocates

Chairman Mao Tse-tung (1955): "Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production."

The U.S. Democratic Party (2008): "When women still earn 76 cents for every dollar that a man earns, it doesn’t just hurt women; it hurts families and children. We will pass the 'Lilly Ledbetter' Act, which will make it easier to combat pay discrimination; we will pass the Fair Pay Act; and we will modernize the Equal Pay Act." (The 2008 Democratic Party Platform, p. 17) See: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

References

External links

Ledbetter v Goodyear Supreme Court Opinion

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