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OCR for page 1
~ Introduction
At the request of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
(EEOC). the Committee on Occupational Classification and Analysis
undertook a study of the issues involved in measuring the comparability
of jobs. What bases skill. effort, responsibility, tasks exist for com-
par~ng jobs? Can they be adequately measured? Specifically, the com-
mittee was charged with assessing formal systems of job evaluation and
other methods currently used in the private and public sectors to estab-
lish the comparability of jobs and their levels of compensation.t The
EEOC is concerned with the validity of the principles used to establish
compensation in particular, with whether methods of job analysis and
classification currently used are biased by traditional stereotypes or other
factors.
The committee undertook its investigation at a time when compen-
sation systems are being intensively questioned, especially by women.
The issue of the "comparable worth" of jobs is being raised in com-
plaints, grievances, public discussions, lawsuits, and legislative initia-
tives. Women who are nurses libranans, government employees, and
clerical workers have assessed their skills and the requirements of their
jobs and have argued that their jobs are underpaid relative to jobs of
' Job c~aIuation systems typically arc used to order jobs hie~rchimlly on the basis of
Judgments regarding their relative skill, effort, responsibility, etc., and on this basis to
group them for pay purposes. For a description of formal job evaluation systems, see
Chapter 4 and also the committee's intenm report to the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (Trciman, 1979).
1
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2
WOMEN. WORK AND WAGES
comparable worth that is jobs requiring similar levels of skill. efforts
and responsibility and similar working conditions that are held mainly
by men. For many women, the slogan "equal pay for work of equal
value" has replaced the slogan "equal pay for equal work," which is
embodied in the Equal Pay Act of 1963. More generally. the issue raised
is that of pay equity in a labor market that is highly segregated by sex.
While the opportunity to move out of segregated job categories may be
welcome to many women. many others who have invested considerable
time in training for their jobs. demand wage adjustment in ~ women s
jobs" rather than opportunities to work in other jobs.
A number of lawsuits have been initiated by women who assert that.
because Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act makes discrimination in
compensation for employment illegal. jobs of comparable worth are
required to be compensated equally and that failure to meet this re-
quirement constitutes discrimination. Some of these lawsuits involve job
evaluation systems. Nurses working for the City of Denver. for example.
claimed that the classification system used by the city's Career Service
Authority to assign jobs to pay classifications was discriminatory. Nurs-
ing service directors were grouped, for pay purposes, in a pay class that
was 86 percent female (including. for example, beginning nurses and
dental hygienists) rather than in a pay class comprised of professional
jobs, held mainly by men, that were alleged by the plaintiffs to be of
equivalent responsibility (for example q hospital administration officers
and directors of environmental health). Of a total of 74 administrative
pay cIasses' in 65 classes all job incumbents were men and in 6 classes
all incumbents were--women; only 3 of the classes had incumbents of
both sexes (Kronstadt' 1978~. The nurses lost their case in district court,
and their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit was
unsuccessful (Lemons v. Denver).
Librarians, too, have challenged the use of classification systems that
result in lower pay for what they regard as jobs with requirements similar
to those of other nonteaching positions. In 1971 librarians at the Uni-
versity of California found that they were in the lowest of the university's
25 nonteaching academic pay series and that their salaries were about
25 percent lower than the salaries of those in comparable nonteaching
academic positions filled mainly by men (Galloway and Archuleta,
1978~. In San Francisco, employees of the city and the county compared
the pay rates of classes of jobs held mainly by men with the pay rates
of classes of jobs held mainly by women. They found salaries of the jobs
held mainly by men to be 74 percent higher than salaries of jobs held
mainly by women. When comparisons were restricted to jobs requiring
equal education and experience, the salary advantage of the jobs held
OCR for page 3
Introduction
mainly by men ranged from 21 percent for selected professional jobs
(for example, recreation instructor or real property appraiser compared
with librarian) to 64 percent for selected clerical jobs (for example,
storekeeper compared with clerk typist) (Women Library Workers and
the- Commission on the Status of Women, 1978~.
Some groups have relied on job evaluation systems to support their
claims of comparable worth. Examples include a number of cases
brought by the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers, alleging that electrical manufacturing companies had put jobs
held exclusively by women into lower pay grades than jobs held exclu-
sively by men. even when the jobs were judged to be of equal value on
the basis of the companies' own job evaluation plans that were used as
the principal bases of pay differentiation within the companies (see the
discussion in Chapter 3~. Similarly, women cIencal workers at the
University of Northern Iowa filed a complaint because craft workers
(primarily men) were paid a premium of SO percent over the salary range
dictated by a job evaluation plan used by the university. Justified by
the university as a business necessity to compete in the- local labor
market, the premium had the effect of paying men more on the average
and women less on the average than their jobs were worth according
to the universities own criteria (Christensen v. lowa).
In the State of Washington, the state government employees' union
requested that a studs be undertaken. using job evaluation techniques
to compare jobs held mainly by men (for example, traffic guide, con-
struction coordinator. electrician) with those held mainly by women (for
example. secretary. clerk typists nurse practitioners. The study found
that for jobs rated equally by! the job evaluation system, those held
mainly by men were paid 20 percent more on the average than those
held maims by women; the difference occurred largely because the
state's pay scales had been developed by using area wage surveys (Re-
mick. 19801. Similar studies. relying on job evaluation techniques, are
being carried out to analyze civil service classifications in a number of
states.
CURRENT LEGAL CONTEXT
The status of claims of comparable worth under federal law is at
present uncertain. Two major federal laws cover employment discum-
ination: the Equal Pa' Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (an amendment to the Fair I-abor Standards
Act) addresses the issue of equal pay for men and women doing equal
work. The act describes equal work as that requiring equal skill, effort,
3
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4
WOMEN, WORK, AND WAGES
and responsibility being performed under similar working conditions.2
Under the Equal Pay Act, job pairs such as janitor and maid, nurse's
aide and orderly, and selector-packer and selector-packer-stacker have
been found to be sufficiently similar as to be considered equal, and
equal pay has been ordered The word "equal" in this context has
been interpreted to require that the jobs so compared be very similar
In work content.
Title VI] of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as amended, prohibits discrim-
ination because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in all
employment practices, including hiring, Snag, promotion, compensa-
tion, and other terms, privileges, and conditions of employments The
2 TIC Equal Pay Act states (29 U.S.C. 1206(d)(1~(1970~:
No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall dis-
criminatc within any cstablishmcot in which such employees arc employed, between
employees on the basis of Scot by paying wages to cmployocs in such establishment
for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort and
responsibility, and which arc performed under similar working conditions, except
where such payment is made pursuant to (i) a senionty system (ii) a merit system
(iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production. or (iv)
a differential based on any other factor other than sex: Provided, that an employer
who is paying a wage rate differential in violation of this subsection shall not in
order to comply with the provisions of this subsection, reduce the wage rate of any
employee.
3 From June 1964 through the end of fiscal 1977 there were 7,878 compliance actions
involving equal pay, and more than S147 million was found to be owed to more than
2S3,000 employees. Almost S16 million was found to be owed to 19.382 employees in
1977 alone, and nearly 13,000 employees benefited from S7 million in restored income
(U.S.. Department of Labor, Employment Standards Administration, 1978~.
' Title VII states in part (42 U.S. Code S20003-2(h)~:
Scc. 703 (a) it shall be an unlawful employment practice for an cmployer~(~) to
fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate
against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or
privileges of employment, because of such indi`tidual's race, color, religion, sex,
or national origin; or (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants
for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any ~ndi~dual
of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an cm-
ployec, because of such individual's race, color, religion, KX, or national origin.
Zinc act choirs all pnvatc employers of IS or more persons, labor unions with 15 or
more members, all educational institutions, federal, State, and local go`,ernmcots, cm-
ployment agencies, and jomt labor-m~gemcot committees that provide apprenticeship
or training. Complaints can be fiend by indi~d~s who believe they have been discrim-
inated against or can be initiated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
the federal agency charged with the caforoement of Title VIl.
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Introduction
-
s
Equal Pas Act was partially incorporated into Title VII via the Bennett
Amendment, which states: "It shall not be an unlawful employment
practice under this title for any employer to differentiate upon the basis
of sex in determining the amount of the wages or compensation paid
or to be paid to employees of such employer if such differentiation is
authorized by the provisions of ithe Equal Pay Act]." Until a recent
Supreme Court decision, the interpretation of this language had been
In dispute. Some interpretations had held that jobs being compared to
establish claims of pay discrimination against women must meet an
Equal Pa' Act test of sim~laritv. An alternative interpretation had been
that the Bennett Amendment was meant to incorporate only the de-
fenses available to an employer that are enumerated in the Equal Pay
Act: that is. If an employer can show that pay differences stem from
seniority. merit. differences in productivity, or differences in any factor
other than sex. then those differences in pay are not illegal.
In June 1981 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in County of Washington
e' al. v. Gunther er al. (80-429), in favor of the latter interpretation:
'`The Bennett Amendment does not restrict Title VIl's prohibition of
sex-based u age discrimination to claims for equal pay for 'equal work.'
Rather, claims for sex-based wage discrimination can also be brought
under Title VI! even though no member of the opposite sex holds an
equal but higher paying job, provided that the challenged wage rate is
not exempted under the Equal Pay Actors affirmative defenses as to wage
differentials attributable to seniority, meet, quantity or quality of pro-
duction, or any other factor other than sex" (SyIlabus, - At.
Me Court made no explicit judgment regarding the validity of the-
concept of comparable worth as a basis for assessing pay equity between
jobs, noting that such a judgment was not relevant to the dispute. De-
sp~te this, the Court appears to distinguish between cases in which plain-
tiffs ask the courts to judge the relative worth of jobs and cases in which
plaintiffs demand that, where employers have made judgments regard-
ng relative job worth (e.g., through the use of job evaluation proce-
dures), they adhere to them in setting pay rates.S
The pertinent part of the decision reads (Courtly of Washington v. Gunther: 18~:
Pctitioncr argues strenuously that the approach of the Court of Appeals places
' the pay structure of virtually every employer and the entire Economy . . . at
risk and subject to scrutiny by the federal courts." Brief for Petitioners. at 99-100.
It raises the spectre that "Title VII plaintiffs could draw any type of comparison
imaginable concerning job duties and pay between any job predominantly per-
formcd by women and any job predominantly performed by men." Id, at 101.
But whatever the merit of petitioner's "gumcots in other contexts, racy arc
OCR for page 6
6
WOMEN. WORK. AND WAGES
Recently one district court has directly supported the comparable
worth contention-that jobs should be paid in proportion to their rel-
ative worth. In April 1981 the U.S. District Court for Western Penn-
sylvania, in Martha L. Taylor e' al. v. CharIey Brothers Company and
Teamsters Local 30 (78-138), held that the employer, a wholesale grocer,
had discriminated against women by assigning them to a separate de-
partment from men and paying them substantially less than those in an
all-male department doing jobs that were different in their content but
similar in their requirements (paragraph 19~: "Defendant Charley
Brothers intentionally discriminated against . . . women in Department
2 by paying them substantially less than the men in Department 1 be-
cause they worked in a department populated only by women and not
because the jobs they performed were inherently worth less than the
jobs performed by the men all in violation of Title VIl." ~ job eval-
uation undertaken by the plaintiffs provided the basis for the judgment
that the pay differences were not due to the fact that the jobs the women
performed revere inherently worth less.
Although the major legislation on employment discrimination in the
United States has no language explicitly incorporating the principle of
equal pay for work of equal value.^ the concept is widely endorsed
abroad. Over 80 member nations of the International Labour Organ~-
sation have ratified Convention 100~ which encourages each member to
"promote . . . and ensure the application to all workers of the principle
of equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal
value.,' Great Britain's 1970 Equal Employment Opportunity Act pro-
vides for equal remuneration for men and women employed in "like
work" or "work of same or a broadly similar nature'' or "work rated
as equivalent. having been given an 'equal value' in a job evaluation
inapplicable here. for claims based on the type of job comparisons petitioner
describes are manifestly different from respondents claim. Respondents contend
that the County of Washington evaluated the worth of their jobs; that the county
determined that they should be paid approximately 95~c as much as the male
correctional officers; that it paid them only about 705E as much. while paying
the male officers the full evaluated worth of their jobs: and that the failure of
the county to pay respondents the full evaluated worth of their jobs can be
proven to be attributable to intentional sex discrimination. Thus. respondents'
suit does not require a court to make its own subjective asscssmcut of the value
of the male and female guard jobs. or to attempt by statistical technique or other
method to quantify the effect of sex disenmination on the wage rates.
~ It is interesting to note. however. that there is an instance of federal legislation using
comparable worth language. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. in the section on
Merit System Principles (S USC 2301.(b)~3~), states: 'Equal pay should be provided for
work of equal value...."
OCR for page 7
Introduction
7
study.' International Labour Office. 197S:12). Canada s Equal Pay and
Equal Opportunity Loam which went into effect in spring 1978 for the
federal government and public!; chartered industries such as the rail-
roads' airlines. and broadcasting companies. calls for equal pay for work
of equal value. Work of equal value Is not explicitly defined, but the
criteria to be applied in the comparisons are the ' composite of skill.
effort, and responsibility as well as working conditions.' The Canadian
Human Rights Commission. which expects the "composite of skill ef-
fort. and responsibility to be determined by the use of job evaluation
techniques. has established a set of guidelines to assess those job eval-
uation systems currently in use. Initial efforts at enforcements however.
hare not gone bet and cases similar to some of the broader cases brought
under the U.S. Equal Pas Act. The Canadian commission has recom-
mended. for example. that female nurses be paid at the same rate as
male hospital technicians a case similar to one in the United States in
which female nurse s aides there judged to do work equal to that of male
orderlies (Perlman and Ennis. 19801. In Australia' where minimum
wages are set for most organizations by state and federal wage boards'
the Federal Tribunal adopted a policy? of equal pay for work of equal
Prague in 1975. Since that time. the average earnings of full-time female
workers hare increased substantial!, relative to those of male workers
(Gregory and Duncan. 1981~. In all these examples of private and public
actions in the United States and abroad, the comparable worth issue
raises questions about compensation practices.
THE ISSUES
mining the relative ~ orth of
In this context the committee interprets the charge from the EEOC
to stud, the validity of compensation systems and methods for deter
jobs as requiring an investigation of whether
and to what extent existing pay differences between jobs are the result
of discrimination.
'~e language of both the American Equal Pay Act and the Canadian Equal Pay and
Equal Opportunity Lax derives from principles used in job evaluation. Skill. effort.
~onsibilit`. and working conditions are the fob features most open measured in job
evaluation plans. These job fcarurcs are chosen because they are widely regarded as
oompensabic; that is. these are the. aspects of jobs that make them worthy of compensation
and that differentiate levels of compensation. In factor point job evaluation plans. com-
pensabic features are called factors. Each jot, is given a numerical rating on each factor,
and the scores arc added for a total job worth score (Treiman. I979~. Most interpretations
of the V.S. Ian in effect require that two jobs have equal scores on every dimension to
be considered equal under the law. whereas the word ~ composite" in the Cariadian law
is presumably meant to indicate that jobs can be considered equal if their total scores are
equal.
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8
WOMEN. WORK, AND WAGES
Many people argue that the wages set by the market determine pre-
cisely what jobs are worth to both employers and employees, but this
position has been explicitly challenged by those who argue that existing
wage differences incorporate discriminatory elements. As noted in the
committee's interim report (Treiman, 1979), most job evaluation plans,
which provide the bases for many employers' compensation programs,
use market wage rates to determine the value of features they identify
as contributing to job worth (typically, skill, effort, responsibility, and
working conditions). That is, how much each feature contributes to the
job worth score (the weight of each factor) is determined by studying,
with the aid of statistical techniques, how those features appear to be
compensated by market wage rates. But if market wage rates incorporate
any bias based on sex, race, or ethnic~ty, then alternative methods for
determining job comparability' or ways to remove such bias. are needed.
Therefore, our investigation of job comparability required us to examine
the bases for wage differentials.
We did not limit the scope of our investigation to particular legal
postures, rules, or definitions. As we suggest above. the state of the law
regarding comparable worth cases remains in flux. The same can be said
for the legal definition of "equal" under the Equal Pay Act and of
`'discomination" under Title VIl.
The committee and individual members have used venous definitions
of discnmination to guide and shape our work. Because of this process
and because there is no hard-and-fast agreement among committee
members among legislators or the public-about the precise mean-
ing of discrimination, or about the proper ways of identifying discrim-
ination' we do not offer a single, absolute definition of discrimination.
All members of the committee do agree that an essential element of the
kind of discnmination we are concerned with here is inequitable treat-
ment based on a person's sex, race, or ethnicity. On that basis we
developed working definitions of employment discrimination and wage
discrimination.
Employment discrimination exists when one class of people is denied
access to higher-paying jobs solely or partly on the basis of social char-
actenstics. If, for example, women or minority men are denied access
to managerial positions solely or partly because of their sex or minority
statu~that is discrimination. This pattern of disparate treatment is not
easy to detect and is open difficult to measure or prove, but when
provable it is illegal under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As a
result of denial of access to better-pay~ng jobs, women and minorities
earn lower wages on the average than do men and nonminonties.
Wage discrimination exists when ~ndi~duals of one social category
OCR for page 9
Introduction
9
are paid less than individuals of another social category for reasons that
have little or nothing to do with the work they do. There are two major
~ .. . . .
types ot wage o~scnm~nat~on
I. One tripe of wage discrimination occurs when one class of people
Is paid less than another class for doing exactly or substantially the same
job: for example, male and female machine assemblers (or truck drivers,
secretaries, elementary school teachers, professors, etc.) working side
by side' doing jobs that are essentially indistinguishable from one an-
other, producing similar results. This kind of wage discrimination is
relatively easy to detect and is illegal under the legislation enacted in
the early 1960s.
2. A second type of wage discnmination, on which this committee
focused intently. arises when the job structure within a find is substan-
tially segregated bs, sex, race, or ethnicity, and workers of one category
ate paid less than workers of another category when the two groups are
performing work that is not the same but that is, in some sense, of
comparable north to their employer. The committee grappled with pre-
asely what the phrase "in some sense'' involves, and the more technical
portions of this report focus at length on how measures of comparable
worth might be used. This type of discrimination is difficult to detect,
and its legal status is unclear.
Five aspects of our study should be kept in mind by the reader. First,
In discussing wage discrimination, particularly of the second type, we
say nothing about the question of intent. How pay inequities have come
about-through willful exclusion, conscious underpayment, or inad-
vertent use of practices that have discriminatory effect~is not ad-
dressed in our discussion. Our use of the word "discrimination" does
not necessarily imply intent.
Second primarily because we have focused on the second type of
wage discrimination. which appears to affect women more than minority
men (see Chapter 2), our discussion of sex discrimination is more com-
plete than our discussion of discrimination against minorities. This does
not reflect any judgment on our part about the relative importance of
sex discrimination and discrimination based on race or ethnic~ty.
Bird, we have not attempted to survey all the methods used to
determine rates of pay in the United States. There is a wide variety of
compensation systems, ranging from extremely informal to highly formal
codified plans, in use today. Each of these plans reflects what employers
(and sometimes employees) regard as the compensable features of jobs
and helps determine what the jobs are worth to them. Because formal
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lo
WOMEN, woRK, AND WAGES
systems of job evaluation make explicit the bases for the comparison
of jobs and job worth, our review of compensation practices is limited
to formal job evaluation plans.
Fourth, we make no judgments regarding the relative value of jobs
to employers or to society or the appropriate relationships among the
pay rates for various jobs. The concept of intrinsic job worth whether
it exists, on what it should be based, whether there is a just wage has
been a matter of dispute for many centuries. We do not believe that the
value or worth jobs can be determined by scientific methods.
Hierarchies of job worth are always, at least in part, a reflection of
ralues.8 Our concern in this report is limited to assessing whether and
to what extent current practices of assessing the worth of jobs and
assigning relative pay rates.inco~orate discriminatory elements. For
this purpose we accept the cutena of job worth developed by those who
use job evaluation plans and ask such questions as whether the criteria
are adequately measured by the features of jobs identified and the
measurement techniques used and, in particular, whether elements of
discrimination enter the process and, if so, how they can be removed.
While many measurement problems are involved in comparing the worth
of jobs within an establishment, we do not believe that these problems
are insurmountable in principle. They are surmountable, with proper
attention to changes in job content and developments in the method-
ology of job analysis' scaling, and the like.9
Fifth, we have confined our discussion to the use of job evaluation
plans within individual firms. Because employers use many different job
evaluation plans, because the economic circumstances of employers and
industnes differ, and because we do not believe that there is a hierarchy
of job worth that could or should be applied to the entire economy, we
look only at the comparable worth approach as it could be used to adjust
the pay rates of jobs within individual firrns.~°
~ It is of interest to note, however, that there is a general consistency. although not an
czact correspondence, in the relative pay rates of jobs in different societies (Trciman,
1977;108 111), which suggests that some features of jobs are valued quite universally.
~ Lee Committee on Occupational Classification and Analysis prepared a report for the
Department of Labor on the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. addressing many issues
conceming the mcasuremcat of jobs (see Miller et al., 1980).
lo This is not to say that we see any difficulty in the application of job evaluation
procedures on an industrywidc basis. as is currcatly done in the steel industry. But this
is a decision properly left to those in the industry, employers and employees. When
compensation is organized on an indus~ywide basis, job evaluation procedures. as part
of the compensation system, would be expected to be similarly organi2cd.
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introduction
PLAN OF THE REPORT
11
We have organized our investigation of the issue of comparable worth
In the following way. First. we review the evidence on the extent of
wage differentials between men and women and investigate the proxi-
mate causes those variables identified by economists and sociologists
as likely to account for some part of the differentials. We then broaden
our perspective to consider the institutional context within which wages
are `determined and workers are allocated to jobs. in order to interpret
the findings and to identify features of labor market operations that may
account for the unexplained portion of wage differentials. Next we assess
Jealous approaches and procedures for formally evaluating the worth
of jobs and suggest some procedures that hold promise for identifying
and reducing bias where it exists in job worth scores and in wage rates.
Finally, we draw together our conclusions from the study.
Chapter 2 documents the substantial difference in earnings between
women and men and notes that the difference has not declined over
time. We consider what may account for this earnings gap. A selective
review of the sociological and economic literature shows that research
has accounted for some of the difference in earnings by differences in
the characteristics of workers (for example, years of experience and
schooling) and in jobs (for example. the requirements of jobs as meas-
ured by the Dictionary of Occupational Titles) that are generally re-
garde-d as legitimate bases for wage differentials. A somewhat different
literature points to the pert asiveness of occupational and job segregation
by sex, and to the fact that jobs held mainly by women tend to be paid
less than jobs held mainly by men. In Chapter 3 we consider the pos-
sibility that in some cases wages for some jobs are depressed at least in
part because the jobs are held mainly by women.
Chapter 3 explores the institutional context within which wages are
set and labor is allocated. in order to understand why differences in
earnings between men and women persist. In our New, labor markets
reflect a complicated set of institutional and other forces that help to
explain the persistence of the earnings differential. We attempt to show
bow such factors as labor market segmentation, job segregation, and
employment practices permit the persistence of earnings differentials
between men and women. We conclude that there is some basis for
believing that intentional and unintentional discriminatory cIements en-
tcr into the determination of wages and are not likely to disappear,
given the current operation of the labor market. And because market
wage rates are likely to incorporate the effects of institutional features,
which sometimes include discrimination, they may not be unbiased in-
dicators of job worth; hence, some attention to remedies is warranted.
OCR for page 12
12
WOMEN. WORK AND WAGES
Chapter 4 explores remedies. in particular those based on the use of
a job evaluation system to identify and possibly correct bias in the
process of setting wages for particular jobs. In enterprises in which job
evaluation plans already exist (and hence can be presumed to provide
a standard of job worth acceptable to the employer), such plans can be
used to identify possible instances of wage discrimination within a fimn.
A suspicion of discrimination exists if the wages of jobs held mainly by
one sex, race, or ethnic group do not correspond on the average to their
job worth scores. In the committee's interim report, three characteristics
of job evaluation systems that make their use problematic in this context
were identified. First, job evaluation is an inherently subjective method,
in which well-known processes of sex stereotyping may be operating,
resulting in undervaluation of jobs held mainly by women. Second, job
worth scores are highly dependent on the choice of compensable features
and the weights assigned to them; since most job evaluation plans use
market wage rates to establish factor weights, the weights will incor-
porate the effects of any discrimination that exists in market wages.
Third, many employers use different plans for different sectors of their
firms (for example, one plan for plant jobs and another for office jobs),
so the worth of jobs cannot be compared across all the jobs in those
firms. In addition to these inadequacies, we note in Chapter 4 that there
are a number of statistical inadequacies in job evaluation procedures as
they are currently practiced. We conclude that these features of job
evaluation plans make it impossible at the present time to recommend
without reservation the use of job evaluation procedures to establish the
relative worth of jobs for the resolution of disputes over pa,' discrimi-
nation. Nevertheless., the committee believes that when a job evaluation
plan is used as the basis for establishing pay rates within a firm, it can
aid in identifying potential wage discrimination. Although job evaluation
plans are not perfect metrics, they are of some use. Moreover, we
suggest improvements that can be made in job evaluation plans to im-
prove their usefulness; in particular, we suggest procedures to reduce
the bias inherent in weights that are based on market wages. These
procedures are still in an experimental stage, however, and the com-
mittee concludes that there is not sufficient scientific basis to support
their imposition on employers by regulatory agencies at the present
time.
Chapter 5 summarizes the conclusions that we draw from our inves-
tigation of methods for determining the comparable worth of jobs.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
equal pay
