While the headlines of the last few weeks have focused on the budget and its deficit, other debates on economic matters have been going on in the Senate and House which could have far-reaching results. The budget relates principally to dollars and cents, whereas the debates on Comparable Worth are about fundamental socio-economic policies.
The principal thrust of the several Comparable Worth bills pending in Congress is to set up a federal commission to make a study of wages paid to federal employees and to determine if there is any sex discrimination to be remedied. Harmless? No, very dangerous. Here’s how colloquies among Congressmen sharpened the issue.
“We’re not talking about Comparable Worth. We’re talking about pay equity.”
I don’t blame you for trying to avoid the label Comparable Worth; it’s a horrible idea. But when an animal walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck no matter what you call it.
It is Comparable Worth if it meets two tests — Comparable and Worth. “Comparable” means comparing jobs that are completely different, such as nurses and plumbers. “Worth” means having some wage commissar decide what employees are worth. Both ideas are wrong, and together they are an economic disaster.
“These bills only call for a study; there’s nothing wrong with that.”
That reminds me of the fish encountering a juicy bait on the end of a line. It looks delicious, but it has a fatal hook in it. What’s wrong with a Comparable Worth study is the hook in it; it will hook us into endless lawsuits.
That’s the lesson of the $1 billion AFSCME v. State of Washington case. The judge ruled that the State was bound to implement the study. In the case of the Illinois Nurses v. Illinois, the ink was scarcely dry on the study before the nurses filed suit to get the same pay as the electricians. The evidence is overwhelming that if you order a study, you are buying billion-dollar lawsuits.
“All we want is fairness.”
There is nothing fair about these bills. The membership of the proposed commission is rigged so that the majority of the members must come from organizations that have endorsed Comparable Worth (either unions or the Democratic Party). Let’s be honest and call it the Commission of Comparable Worth Commissars. Don’t pretend it is equity and fairness when it is not.
“How dare you call the commissioners commissars! What do you mean by that?”
Commissars are officials who have extraordinary power to enforce their own political bias. That’s exactly what this commission is. The power to set wages is enormous.
Not only is the membership of the commission loaded with advocates of Comparable Worth, but the commissioners are given extraordinary power to determine that whatever wage differences they cannot explain MUST be “discrimination.” The result is predetermined.
“Comparable Worth has been put into effect in many places and is working well.”
That’s not true. In Minnesota, the policemen and the firemen are in court trying to stop the Comparable Worth evaluations from being applied to them because they see that they will be devalued, as will all blue collar workers.
“The bill is NOT an attack on blue collar workers.”
The whole point of Comparable Worth is RELATIVE or COMPARABLE wages. The purpose of the proposed evaluation is to COMPARE women and men. If some women are UNDERpaid, comparatively speaking, others must be OVERpaid — and those are the blue collar workers.
The technique the evaluators will use to devalue blue collar workers is a point system in which physical effort and working conditions combined make up only 5% of the points a worker can get. When all government workers are evaluated into a single wage system by these Comparable Worth Commissars, the blue collar worker is bound to lose.
“35 states are doing Comparable Worth studies.”
Not true. They may be considering them, but most states are rejecting them. The momentum is going AGAINST Comparable Worth. Most of the states that considered Comparable Worth this year defeated it, including Illinois and Texas. North Carolina repealed its earlier endorsement.
Comparable Worth is losing everywhere in the states and also in the courts. It should lose in Congress, too.
