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Equal pay for equal work
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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. Job Evaluation
noble ideas are either difficult or impossible to implement in free societies.
Discussion
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Encyclopedia
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. Job Evaluation
Criticism
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.
A concomitant problem is that the law is vaguely defined (because such a law can only be defined vaguely.) That leaves large room for interpretation, meaning ample opportunity for litigation.
Opponents
Obviously, people who oppose the very idea of women in the workforce are opposed to Equal Pay as well as any other social engineering that advances the idea. In the United States, very small religious groups such as the Amish may oppose this opinion but do not gain significant political power from it.
The U.S. Republican Party has rejected the idea of legislating or adjudicating equal pay across genders, insisting that public policy can't address social ills by changing outcomes.
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
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