Wage Solidarity and
Equal Value: Or
Gender and Class
in the Structuring
of Work Place
Hierarchies
ROSEMARY WARSKETT
omen's unequal pay has emerged as one of the
dominant employment issues in Canada. This
reflects, in large part, the strength of the women's
movement and its impact on legislators and unions. As
awareness of the gap between the average wages of men
and women grew over the last two decades,' the women's
movement and women in unions pressed for state policies
to address their significantly lower pay. Both the women's
and union movements lobbied federal and provincial
legislatures for the introduction of legislation embodying
the principle of equal pay for work of equal value (hereafter
referred to as equal value). At the same time unions passed
resolutions
at conventions,
placed demands on the
bargaining table and held conferences both for the purpose
of raising members' awareness of the wage gap and devising
strategies to deal with it.
The changes in the home and in women's participation
in the labour force in the last thirty years contributed to
radically changing women's consciousness regarding their
unequal position in the work place. The labour force participation rate for women is now approximately 55 percent
W
Studies in Political Economy 32, Summer 1990
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Studies in Political Ecomomy
as compared to 27 percent in 1961, and women now represent nearly 40 percent of all unionized workers as compared to 16.6 percent in 1965. These significant material
changes underlie the push by the women's movement and
the unions for strategies designed to raise women's pay.
Considerable research effort has been devoted to seeking
the reasons for the female/male wage gap? One of the most
important findings has been that women, in general, do dif>
ferent work from men and are occupationally segregated
into a narrow range of lower paid jobs. Once this became
clear, the limitation inherent in 'equal pay for equal work'
legislation became transparent, thus raising the necessity
for other policy measures to address the wage gap. Feminists
stressed the importance of affirmative action strategies
aimed at eradicating systemic barriers that exclude women
from work traditionally performed by men. However, since
such strategies benefit women only to the extent that higher
paying jobs are available, women's movement activists
began to place greater emphasis on equal value. In the
1980s, with negative growth in the better paid, male-dominated, primary goods producing sector of the job market,
and a marked increase in low paid, private sector service
jobs, the equal value strategy seemed to be a more politically
'realistic' option.3
Two main strategies directly targeting women's pay are
currently applied in certain work places in Canada - equal
value and wage solidarity.4 The equal value approach to
women's unequal pay starts from the assumption that the
work women do is undervalued compared to the work men
traditionally perform. It seeks to raise women's pay by requiring that male and female jobs of the same value are
paid at the same rate. The job comparison is usually
achieved through job evaluation methods which define value
in terms of the skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions (or variations of these factors) inherent in the tasks
of each job. Advocates of this approach maintain that gender
discrimination prevents women's work from being paid a
'fair' wage. It is argued that, through job evaluation free
of gender bias, comparisons can be made between essentially different kinds of 'male and female jobs' within a
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Value
firm or bureaucracy, allowing women's work to be assessed
and paid on the same basis as men's.
Alternatively wage solidarity applies the progressive
union strategy of using the power of all members to decrease
pay differentials and raise the wages of the lowest paid.
While this strategy is frequently not directed specifically
at women, women do benefit since they are disproportionately found among the lower paid. S There are, nonetheless, many occasions when unions have bargained on a wage
solidarity basis with the explicit intention of benefiting women. For example one of the key demands of the Canadian
Union of Public Employees (CUPE) for lower mainland
municipal workers in British Columbia in 1981 was to raise
the base pay rates of 'inside' clerical workers (predominantly female) up to those of 'outside' manual workers
(predominantly male), thereby establishing an equal entry
rate of pay for both men and women.6 This constituted a
wage solidarity policy since all union members (female and
male) were mobilized to support a minimum entry rate of
pay, and a lowering of the differentials between all workers?
The central argument of this paper is that gender bias
and discrimination do not provide a sufficient explanation
of why women's work has in general been lower paid than
men's work. Account must be also taken of the fact that
women, in general, occupy the most subordinate and controlled positions in work place, skill hierarchies. The consequence of explaining women's lower pay entirely in terms
of discrimination and gender bias is that too much emphasis
has been placed on the equal value approach as a means
of narrowing the wage gap. Women and unions should not
'put all their eggs in the basket' of equal value but should
integrate the valuing of women's work with wage solidarity
strategies which also target the wages of the lowest paid
and those in poor quality non-unionized jobs.
The paper is organized into three sections. First I examine
the issue of skill and its social construction. It is concluded
that the equal value approach is an attempt to redefine and
reconstruct the skill content of work performed for the most
part by women. In the following section I examine job evaluation procedures which are the standard means of achiev57
Studies in Political Ecomomy
ing this redefinition. There I contend that the concept of
value used in the evaluation simply reflects the employer's
structuring of the work place into a 'skill' hierarchy and
that women's subordination in this structure results from
the interaction of gender and class forces. Finally, I conclude
by briefly considering reasons why unions should integrate
strategies for closing the wage gap with a wage solidarity
approach.
Women's Work: Skill, Control and Resistance There is
a dualism running through the literature on women's low
pay and the wage gap. One position is that the skill of
women's work is undervalued as compared to the work men
traditionally do and, as a consequence, women are paid at
a lower rate.8 In this case equal value is the prescribed
strategy to raise women's pay. The other approach documents how women have been drawn into the most subordinate and degraded positions in the work place with limited
bargaining power, low pay and little opportunity for promotion into higher skilled jobs.9 Wage solidarity strategies
which seek to raise the wages of the lowest paid and decrease the differentials between low and high paid workers
are prescribed to address this problem. 10
The two perspectives on women's work - i) that women
have been relegated to the most deskilled and subordinate
positions in the work place and ii) that the skill of women's
work has been undervalued as compared to men's - are
paralleled by the debate regarding 'objective and subjective'
definitions of work tasks and skill found in the labour process literature. It was Harry Braverman who rekindled the
debate in the mid-seventies by raising the important question
of the relationship of the skill content of jobs in advanced
capitalist society to the unequal distribution of rewards by
the market. 11
Braverman's concern was to reveal the tendency of monopoly capital to increase accumulation by attempting to exercise total control over the labour process and labour power
through the creation of detail labour and its consequent
cheapening of labour power. His focus was on the "objective" structure of the class system in advanced capitalist
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Value
society and the way that capital, in striving to increase the
appropriation of surplus value, had degraded and deskilled
labour by separating conception and planning from the execution of tasks. He argued that during the twentieth century
conceptualization of tasks had been increasingly removed
from workers and placed in the hands or rather the heads
of management. In this sense deskilling completes the real
subordination of labour and "the worker must become the
instrument of labor in the hands of the capitalist. ••12
A continuing problem for researchers is how to operationalize Brverman's conception of skill. One fruitful approach has been suggested by Crompton and Jones who
define skilled tasks as those needing control over self and/or
over others.13 Unskilled tasks require the following of well
defined rules and regulations that are totally predictable,
involve little autonomous thought or action and therefore
lack self control both in terms of conceptualization and
pacing when executing the work. Based on this definition
of skill it was found that 91 percent of all clerks in three
large firms in Britain exercised very little skill in their jobs.
These findings were echoed by Graham S. Lowe's study of
women in the Canadian office. He found that, in general,
women were assigned the most routinized and monotonous
tasks and occupied the most subordinate, dead-end positions. Male office workers, in contrast to female clerks,
occupied superior administrative positions and had the opportunity to advance up the career ladder.14
Thus women clerks are vertically rather than horizontally
segregated from men. Males in the office not only do different work from women but typically their work involves
the exercise of responsibility and control over women subordinates. Because men in general supervise, direct and exercise control over women, their work in this respect alone
is defined as more skilled. As a consequence women clerks
have less power than men in terms of the immediate labour
process, their relationship with management, their ability
to command income as well as less power within their
unions.
Certainly these conditions
obtained in Charlene
Gannage's study of clothing workers. Although the control
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Studies in Political Ecomomy
of the male owner in this case study was simple and direct
as compared to the bureaucratic control system many office
workers experience, most of the women clothing workers
were vertically segregated into the most deskilled, noncraft
jobs. The women's work in contrast to the men's was
"repetitious, more automatic, more routinized - an adjunct
to making the whole garment."IS In these cases of clerks
and clothing workers, women occupied positions over which
men had control and at least in that sense were, objectively,
less skilled than the men. Pat and Hugh Armstrong found
in their examination of women's paid labour that
at all levels, women are much more likely to be workers, not
bosses; to be dressmakers not foremen ... Whatever the occupation, women tend to be directed by either men or machines.16
These findings are corroborated by calculations for Canada
in 1981.17 In those occupations in which incumbents are
considered to exercise significant control over themselves
39.5 percent were women, and in those in which the incumbents exercised significant control over others only 27
percent were women.
Although the definition of skill as control over self and
others is useful in understanding how management attempts
to construct job hierarchies, it is by itself static and ahistorical and needs to be complemented by the conception of
skill as a political process which involves power and resistance by workers to management's control strategies. IS
There is considerable evidence that certain well organized
groups of male workers were able to retain the rewards of
skilled labour even when they were unsuccessful in preventing the removal of some or much of the control they exercised over the labour process. The attempts by employers
in the nineteenth century to transform the labour process
and substitute the cheap labour of 'dependents' (both women
and children) for that of men, resulted in a struggle by
skilled male workers to preserve their jobs. While in some
cases this resulted in women's exclusion from certain work
places and their occupational segregation in others, it often
resulted in deskilled male workers retaining both the wages,
status and skilled image of their former work. Canadian
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printers, like their British counterparts, retained control over
their "craft" by restricting entry and vigorously defending
apprenticeships.l'' Cynthia Cockburn's work on the printing
trade reveals that, when technological change occurred,
printers were organized enough to be able to demand job
rights to the new typesetting machines resulting in the retention of their position in the "skill" hierarchy.20 In the context
of Canada, Jane Gaskell argues that male-dominated craft
unions were more successful in creating an "image of skill"
regarding their work than women. She compares the training
for a trade to that of clerical work and concludes that women
clerks' unskilled status "is produced in part by training that
is widely accessible and formally short. ,,21 Male manual
workers' skilled "image" was achieved by restricting entry
to the trade and demanding long apprenticeship programs.
In these and other ways male workers' accepted changes
in job content while successfully resisting changes to either
their skilled craft image or their pay.
But women's lower pay and lower position in the skill
hierarchy was not solely the result of the male-dominated
craft unions' struggle to distinguish their work from
'unskilled' female labour, and preserve pay and status differentials. In Canada and the United States, male workers'
resistance, through widespread unionization of manufacturing industries in the 1930s and 1940s, resulted in both
management and state policies to control and channel labour
into forms which were congruent with capital accumulation.
Some theorists describe the post-war compromise (at the
level of the labour process) as one in which labour consented
to management's control and the demand for higher productivity in return for higher wages.22 In the post-war years,
right up to the early seventies, male-dominated industrial
unions were able to raise the value of their members' unskilled and semi-skilled work. Women's participation in
the paid labour force and unions, in this period of rising
wages, was relatively low.
The work of 'radical' labour market theorists suggests
that the way in which work is organized and the way in
which management controls the labour process have also
contributed to the construction of a white, male-dominated
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Studies in Political Ecomomy
•skill , hierarchy. Certain workers in intemallabour markets
are more highly remunerated and given opportunities for
promotion in order to achieve a stable, reliable work force.23
In other words, worker compliance is obtained through a
system of bureaucratic control where workers strive to be
promoted to the next step in the hierarchy. The evidence
reveals that it is males and not females who have mainly
benefited from this system of "bureaucratic control. ••24 Over
one third of all women in the paid labour force are engaged
in some form of clerical work, many of them in private
and state bureaucracies; but, as noted earlier, they are found
in the most subordinate and controlled positions in the office. This raises the question of whether management may
have been willing to pay men higher wages than women,
even when few skill differences in their work have been
apparent. Men's upwardly mobile office careers were possible because women provided support in the office as subordinates, and physical and emotional support in the
household, again as subordinates.25 Not everyone can be
promoted, especially not those who take primary responsibility for children and domestic chores, both of which
make continual demands on time and take substantial
amounts of physical and mental energy. In order to function,
the •skill , hierarchy in many work places depends on a body
of labour which remains in the subordinate positions, both
in the household and the work place. It is clear that large
numbers of women were and still are slotted into both these
roles.26
Recent pay equity bargaining and decisions in Ontario
and the federal sector reveal other instances in which men
have been more successful than women in constructing an
image of skill. For example, in York Board of Education
schools it was revealed that caretakers (male) and matrons
(female) were doing essentially the same cleaning and maintenance work, but had different job titles and, therefore,
were perceived to do different work. The caretakers were
perceived to have more responsibility and to do heavier
physical work. As a consequence they earned nearly $1.40
per hour more than the women?7 In a similar case in Peel
Region schools women cleaners were given a 50 percent
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Value
increase in pay as the result of an Ontario Human Rights
Commission decision.28 One of the first cases to be settled
in the federal sector revealed that librarians (female-dominated group) working in the National Library were doing
substantially the same kinds of tasks as historical researchers (male-dominated group) in the National Archives.
The librarians earned on average 20 percent less than the
researchers.29 In all these cases the work done by females
and males was substantially the same but the different titles
of the jobs led them to be segregated. These titles together
with assumptions that the female-dominated work should
be slotted into a lower position in the job hierarchy led to
the justification of lower pay.
Where women are found in the most subordinate jobs in
certain work places it is the fact that they are at the bottom
of the work place hierarchy which accounts for their low
pay, no matter how skilled or deskilled the job content may
be in terms of self control. It is in this way that the equating
of skill with control over others takes on meaning and forms
a hierarchy of control established by management within
the work place. For example female-dominated clerical
work often involves the same kinds of tasks as male-dominated administrative work but a different language is used
in job descriptions to justify women's lower value and
wages. Women are said to coordinate while men direct; women assist, while men do.30 Although the actual content of
a male job may not be more skilled than a subordinate female position in terms of control over self, the control over
others and supervision responsibilities embodied in them
may be the important difference in how the jobs are evaluated and classified by the employer.
The defining of tasks as skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled involves processes of power and struggle. There is
a need to examine not only the power some employees have
in terms of being assigned tasks involving control over self
and over others, but also the power others have in creating
an 'image' of skill and in achieving higher pay. Undoubtedly
the general cultural denigration of women has fed into the
construction of a lower skilled image of the work women
do in the paid labour force. It is this cultural lack of worth
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Studies in Political Ecomomy
that women are attempting to change through the demand
for equal value.
If the history of capitalist production can be understood
as the history of the destruction and recomposition of skills,
it is equally the case that the history of the labour movement
is a history of economic and political struggle over skill,
deskilling and the value of labour power. This has been a
struggle in which women have been significantly less
powerful than men in general. One important reason for
women's inability to improve their position in the skill
hierarchy, along with the market value of their work, is
that women, in general, did not form a permanent part of
the paid labour force until quite recently. Labour force participation rates of women reveal that right up to the sixties
the female work force changed "every few years as a new
generation of women assumed family responsibilities,,31 giving birth, bringing up children and performing domestic
labour. Unionization was virtually impossible given the constant turnover out and into the private realm of the household.
Both as a response to labour force demands and to women's increased control over their bodies and reproduction,
the form of the family household economy has changed
dramatically over the last thirty years. Where men and women form a unit, it is now based on the wages of each
partner, on the prolonged dependency of a smaller number
of children than in the past, and on the domestic labour of
mainly the women. Also, now many more women live alone
or form units with their children and/or with other women.
However, their growing independence from men has not
been paralleled by substantially higher wages. The wage
gap persists despite the structural changes in the home
economy and the feminization of the labour force. This
means that women continue to be caught, to some extent,
in a position of economic dependence on men.
In order for capital to lower unit costs, women have been
increasingly drawn into paid labour, but significant contradictions have resulted for employers as a consequence.
Women now perceive themselves to be part of the permanent
paid labour force and are engaged in a struggle with
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Value
employers and the state to increase their pay and their position in the 'skill' hierarchy. In much the same way that
men were forced to struggle, both during the early period
of craft manufacture and later when the labour process had
largely been transformed to a semi-skilled and deskilled
industrial process during the 1930s and 1940s, women are
now attemptinfi through bargaining strategies and pay equity legislation,
to obtain greater value for their labour.
Wage solidarity approaches, however, are receiving less attention in the women's and union movement and seem in
danger of being pushed off the agenda. With the introduction
of pay equity laws (embodying equal value provisions) in
a number of provinces during the 1980s, equal value, implemented through job evaluation, has become the dominant
strategy for raising women's unequal pay.33
Job Evaluation and the Value of Women's Work It is
ironic that the task of challenging and reconstructing the
social definition of the skill of women's work in both
Canada and the United States is to be accomplished through
the traditional management tool of job evaluation. Job evaluation methods in the very recent past were a means of
justifying women's lower paid status, and still are in many
firms. Originally, job evaluations were used as an extension
of scientific management techniques which were introduced
in the United States in the 1920s.34 Most medium to large
public and private sector employers structure their wage
systems through evaluation procedures. Firms normally introduce them in an effort to obtain consistency in setting
the internal value of jobs with reference to job prices in
the external labour market.
Job evaluation typically involves three steps: i) description and analysis of the job content, usually in terms of the
skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions (or variations of these factors) which characterize the tasks of the
job; ii) evaluation by assigning relative value or weight to
the job content or characteristics; iii) wage setting, which
is based on internal comparisons and comparisons with
bench marks in the external labour market. Where employees are unionized the whole procedure can be
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Studies in Political Ecomomy
negotiated, although for certain public sector employees
there are restrictions on bargaining over the actual evaluation system.3S
The main criticisms of these procedures by advocates of
the equal value approach are that different plans are often
used to evaluate the work of men and women and that most
plans have involved some gender bias. The bias or discrimination can occur at various stages of the job evaluation
process - at the initial stage of collection and analysis of
data regarding the actual tasks being performed; during the
determination of the characteristics or factors to be compensated; at the moment of their evaluation; and finally in
the assigning of a rate of pay. Consequntly, equal value is
said to be achieved by removing the gender-bias at all stages
of the process together with the consistent aP:Rlication of
one plan to all jobs in a given establishment. 6 But what
is meant by removing gender-bias in this case? Advocates
seem to mean that traditionally women's work has not been
accorded the same market value as men's work because of
gender discrimination. Through a process which consciously
evaluates "the productivity-based
job content, characteristics of the jobs discrimination will be removed and women will be able to achieve a 'fair' market wage for their
work.,,37
Recent studies regarding the implementation of pay equity legislation in Ontario have identified a number of technical problems with the job evaluation comparison approach
to equal value.38 Because legislation specifies that comparisons are limited to the same 'establishment' it is estimated that less than half of all women in the paid labour
force will be in a position to benefit. Women are so extensively segregated that few male comparisons of equal value
can actually be found in many work places.39 For example,
in the health care sector many women work in medical offices and small nursing homes where the only males are
doctors. They are self-employed and thus not counted as
part of the same establishment. Even if they were included,
it is likely that their professional skills would be rated more
highly than those of women who predominate in nursing,
radiography or physiotherapy. This is also the case in larger
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Value
health establishments where the only male comparisons
available are the highly valued doctors or low valued manual
workers. Even if manual workers could provide a point of
comparison for female-dominated jobs, this type of work
is often contracted out to other employers, and therefore
not counted as part of the same establishment. Comparisons
will likely be easier to find in large bureaucracies, such as
government departments, which include both manual and
non-manual classifications.4O
For non-unionized workers it is employers who will decide unilaterally both on the evaluation plans and the comparisons. Employees who are not satisfied with the
employer's implementation of equal value are free to complain to the Pay Equity Commission, but the experience of
the federal sector shows that non-unionized employees very
rarely file complaints, probably because they fear employer
retaliation. In view of all this, women will most likely gain
from equal value legislation where they are unionized and
if they work in a large firm or bureaucracy where comparisons with male-dominated jobs can be found.
Yet while there are problems even at the implementation
stage, the difficulties with equal value legislation are much
more profound than this. Advocates of equal value often
assume that the market has historically been a rational
means of determining male wages, and that, with some adjustments, it will work equally well for women. Job evaluation is seen as an objective, scientific means of measuring
the value of the various tasks associated with any particular
job; therefore, once gender bias is eliminated, the true value
of women's work will 'shine through' and women can then
be remunerated accordingly. Even those who do not claim
objectivity for the job evaluation method of assessing jobs,
nevertheless, argue that it systematizes the employer's value
system and hence results in the removal of discrimination
from the system of classifying jobs. The argument is that
the method allows both women and men to be treated equally within the prevailing standards of occupational worth.41
But what are these standards and whose interests do they
serve?
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The concept of equal value appears to be a logical extension of the principal of equal pay for equal work since women do not do the same work as men the pursuit
of equal pay for work of equal value would seem to be a
logical next step in remunerating women fairly. Yet, equality
in both cases is measured by evaluation systems which in
fact reflect and rationalize the existing unequal class structure of the work place. The most significant way this occurs
is through the very heavy weight assigned to the factors of
skill and responsibility, as compared to effort and working
conditions. Responsibility, as Richard Hyman pointed out,
is the "key ideology;" it is "primarily a euphemism for domination.,,42 To be an employee means not only to sell one's
labour power but also to enter a system of management
control. Job evaluation systems, by highly valuing managerial control and professional skills, reflect the hierarchy
which exists both in the work place and society in general.
Willis Associates job evaluation plan is an example of
how equal value is currently applied. It has been in use for
some years but has recently been up-dated and converted
to a bias-free measurement tool designed to correct genderbased pay disparities.43 The plan was selected by the federal
Joint Union Management Committee on Equal Pay For Work
of Equal Value in order to make equal value comparisons
between 67 different occupational groups in the federal system. It proceeds by evaluating the tasks of all jobs according
to four components: (1) knowledge and skills (2) mental
demands (3) accountability (4) working conditions. In the
first three components the weight given to managerial responsibility and control is considerable; for example,
managerial skills included in the first component can receive
up to 736 points as compared to a maximum of 92 points
for working conditions.
The plan does attempt to evaluate interpersonal or human
relations skills. This innovation normally should benefit women as their jobs tend to demand more of this skill than
male jobs.44 For example caring for the sick, the elderly
and children is skilled work traditionally performed by women. In the past it has been assumed that the skills involved
are innate, part of women's biological makeup and not some68
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Value
thing which can be learned either through training or experience. Given the inclusion of interpersonal skills in the
Willis plan, it might be expected to reveal the value of
these previously invisible skills. In the Willis plan, however,
human relations skills measured tend to have more to do
with controlling others than caring for them. The skill is
for the most part defined in terms of influencing or motivating others to action. The middle level of the skill is found
in positions "in which influence of others is a major responsibility. It could be thought of as nudging others along a
path they may be inclined to move.,,4S Willis' highest rating
for interpersonal skills refers to "motivating others or getting them to do something that they might not do otherwise ."46 In instructions to evaluators it is pointed out that
many executive and supervisory positions fall at the top
level of interpersonal skill. So even in this case of an evaluation plan where 'feminine skills' are supposedly recognized
and rated, the hierarchy of control inserts itself and the top
ratings are reserved for managements' ability to control
workers.
Even when attempts are made to free job evaluation procedures of gender bias, they still reflect the employer's control of the labour process. Evaluation is ideologically based
on the employers standpoint of what is valuable in terms
of the goals of the organization. Equating equal pay with
job evaluation tends to mask the inequality inherent in a
structure where management control is assigned the highest
weight and value. The concepts of 'equality' and 'fairness'
serve to legitimize the existing hierarchy, the structured inequality which is based not only on gender discrimination
but also on class divisions emanating from the market economy.
In the previous section I argued that women had not been
as successful as men either in constructing an 'image' of
skill for their work or in achieving positions of control.
Job evaluation schemes are constructed to reflect the power
of capital and employers to impose a certain kind of hierarchy on the world of work; but they also reflect the success
of certain kinds of employees, who are predominantly male,
white and not working class, in achieving a high place in
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that hierarchy. Inevitably control of workers and the labour
process will be highly valued by management and as a consequence this is reflected in job evaluation plans.
In the end, the prevailing standards of occupational worth
found in job evaluation plans are largely derived from the
inegalitarian and meritocratic logic of distribution in market
society. To advocate that women's pay should be based on
this logic is to affirm a certain faith in the operation of
market pricing and the class hierarchy it supports. Underlying the strategy of equal value is the assumption that gender bias and discrimination have prevented women from
being valued on the basis of merit and achievement, so
denying them their proper place in the hierarchy. In this
sense the demand for equal value "is essentially a campaign
to rectify distortions of the market. ••47 The hierarchy itself
is not questioned despite the fact that large numbers of women, Native people, people of colour and new Canadians
are found at its lower end.
But just because the equal value approach does not question the unequal structuring of market society is not in itself
an adequate reason to argue that women should not attempt
to obtain a price for their labour equivalent to the price of
men's - that, in effect, women should be exploited at the
same rate as men rather than superexploited. As one union
woman, working on the federal Joint Union Management
Committee on Equal Pay pointed out, why should women
have to wait for a more egalitarian society before they can
demand the same wages as men?48
While recognizing the force of this argument, its limitation rests in the problem that only some women will benefit
from equal value and as a result pay differentials will tend
to be increased between women rather than narrowed. Job
evaluation has resulted in some very successful cases of
revaluing women's work and raising pay, but it will not
benefit many other women and may reinforce their subordination. As an example, jobs in the consumer service sector
are largely non-unionized, require little training and pay
minimum wages. It is women in these kinds of jobs who
are most in need of higher wages, but as I argued earlier,
for the most part, they will be unaffected by the equal value
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Value
approach. Furthermore, equal value will not be effective in
firms such as banks and insurance companies where women
are employed in the most controlled and subordinate positions and men are employed in middle and upper management. This is clear from a recent study of the six largest
chartered banks that reveals women are overwhelmingly
found in the most controlled positions (69.4 percent), even
though they represent a large majority of all bank employees
(72.5 percent).49 In these cases the lack of success of equal
value legislation can be rationalized: pay equity was implemented, it may be argued, but certain kinds of work simply do not merit higher pay.SOEquity in this form is nothing
more than a justification for continuing to pay some women
below the level of a living wage. This interpretation of pay
equity will have a demobilizing effect on the fight by low
paid women to raise their pay and their position in the 'skill'
hierarchy,and will reinforce the market ideology that work
should be paid on the basis of skills which are in short
demand. In this way equal value policy runs counter to a
wage strategy which decreases differentials between workers and attempts to ensure that all workers earn a minimum,
acceptable standard of living.
Linking Equal Value and Wage Solidarity In spite of the
limitations of equal value, its importance as a legal reform
can not be easily discounted or dismissed. After all it has
already, and will continue to, put much needed income into
the hands of many women. Perhaps more significantly, the
campaigns for the legalization and implementation of equal
value have resulted in a wide debate, both within the union
movement and society in general, about the causes of the
wage gap, occupational segregation and the cultural denigration of women's work. During the sixties and early seventies
this debate was mainly limited to the women's movement,
since unions at that time were overwhelmingly male-dominated both in terms of leadership positions and policy.
The few union submissions to the Royal Commission on
the Status of Women (1967-1970) showed little awareness
or concern about the problem of the wage gap and women's
occupational segregation. During the last fifteen years sig71
Studies in Political Ecomomy
nificant change has occurred within unions. Women have
gained more power and have challenged their unions to take
up a wide range of issues identified with the feminization
of the labour force, including that of equal pay.S1 By the
mid-eighties wage gap policies had been passed by most
major unions and federations of labour.
The existence of federal equal value legislation (enacted
as part of the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1978) played
an important role within the Canadian Labour Congress and
the unions in legitimizing the principle of revaluing women's work and the goal of closing the wage gap. In the
federal sector, it is primarily unions that have pursued the
principle of equal value and laid most of the complaints
before the Canadian Human Rights Commission. And although support for issues related to the employment of women still has to be struggled for within unions, nevertheless,
because equal value is law, the leadership and members of
federal sector unions are more responsive to demands for
action regarding women's unequal pay and more open to
arguments concerning the undervaluing of women's work
than in the past. S2
.
Moreover, the use of job evaluation methods and procedures for equal value comparisons, is not without contradictions for management's control of the skill hierarchy. Many
unions are discovering that it is neither necessary nor desirable to leave the determination of equal value in the hands
of job evaluation consultants and experts - the same experts who constructed the gender-biased plans in the first
place. S3 Through the negotiation of plans and participation
in evaluation committees, rank and file union members are
exposed to how job evaluation works and some discover
its problems and limitations. S4 Through this process there
is often increased awareness and willingness to negotiate
changes in the structure of the work hierarchy.55 The power
of unions to negotiate fundamental changes to the work
place hierarchy without fundamental political changes is
limited, yet the development of membership knowledge of
how this system is structured is essential if gender, race
and class inequalities are to be exposed.
72
WarskettlEqual
Value
If unions persist, however, in treating women's unequal
pay as separate and distinct from the 'main business' of
pay negotiations there is likely to be growing division between members in female and male-dominated groups,
which will exacerbate and deepen those already present.
Equal value raises the question: are women's jobs labelled
unskilled even though their content is skilled or at least
semi-skilled? But where equal value policy succeeds
management will likely raise the opposite question: are certain male-dominated jobs labelled skilled even though their
content is largely unskilled? There is evidence this has begun to happen. As a result of applying one pay evaluation
scheme to the entire company some employers are proposing
to 'red-circle' certain jobs which now appear to be overvalued. For example the Director of Personnel of the Bank
of Nova Scotia stated that, as a result of implementing a
pay equity plan, the bank undertook a complete job evaluation of all positions and discovered that, according to the
criteria of the plan, some positions were overvalued.56 Although pay equity laws prohibit the lowering of the comparison group's wages, 'red-circling' which effectively
freezes pay rates was deemed, by the Ontario Pay Equity
Commission, to be acceptable within the terms of the legislation.57 Of course where red-circling occurs, divisions will
likely be generated between workers receiving pay equity
adjustments and those whose jobs have been downgraded.
This brings us to another major problem with legislated
equal value. It ignores how the reform will be defended
against employers who will inevitably seek to balance out
the gains made by workers in female-dominated jobs by
either contracting out jobs (especially where workers are
unionized) or by spreading the costs of pay equity to other
workers. When the latter is the case it is likely that there
will be renewed efforts by male-dominated groups to bargain on the basis of traditional differentials - unless the
union has developed a strategy to deal with the problem.
As Johanna Brenner points out, the policy of equal value
"seems to offer an immediate remedy to a pressing problem,
but it may institutionalize divisions among women and between women and men that will make future collective cam73
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Studies in Political Ecomomy
paigns difficult."SS When the problem of the wage gap is
framed only in terms of gender discrimination or bias and
not also as class exploitation it becomes marginal. The difficulties of devising working class strategies for the collective defense of pay equity, and also as a means of preventing
other workers from bearing its costs, are left aside by unions
and the problem remains in the realm of non-decision
making.
Where equal value is successful many employers will
seek ways of 'passing on' the increased costs of women's
labour to workers in general. This is likely to result in a
number of different initiatives, some of which are beginning
to become evident. Red-circling is one thrust but others
will also involve the collective bargaining process. In Ontario, where pay equity legislation is in the process of being
implemented, employers are arriving at the bargaining table
with the position that pay increases to male-dominated
groups must be kept low in order to avoid adjusting the
pay of comparison female job classes any higher than absolutely necessary. 59 It is clear that given these kinds of
initiatives on the part of employers there is a pressing need
to forge a wage solidarity approach and make the demand
to close the wage gap part and parcel of the 'main business'
of unions' bargaining strategy. At certain points in history,
this may mean asking higher paid workers to hold back
their wage demands in order to narrow the gap between
the higher paid and the lower paid. If unions are to prevent
their erosion as organizations that defend all members of
the working class and build solidarity, this is a decision
that must be made within the labour movement and not left
de facto to the decisions and operations of employers and/or
the state. The long term effects of the current pay equity
legislation may well result in the latter outcome.
There are other urgent reasons for unions to integrate
equal value with a wage solidarity approach. Over the last
ten years while women have been fighting to bring up their
low pay, capital has been restructuring internationally. This
current round of restructuring is resulting in far-reaching
and profound changes in the way that work is organized in
certain parts of the economy. The past decade has seen a
74
WarskettlEqual
Value
marked growth in what is being called 'marginalized' categories of workers. Very few jobs are being created in the
better paid primary sector of the economy that is traditionally male-dominated and unionized. More than 60 percent
of the new jobs created since 1984 are in the two lowest
paid industrial categories - trade and service, also the sectors with the lowest rates of unionization.60 These are the
minimum wage 'hamburger' jobs and these are the jobs
which are filled by women and youth. They are in the main
low paid, part time and of course non-union. So while on
the one hand women have been pushing for equal value,
employers on the other have been seeking ways to reduce
labour costs and raise profits. And in the meantime large
multi-national corporations are finding ways to move capital
and jobs to low wage countries, where women are even
more greatly exploited. Furthermore, in Canada women of
colour have a far greater likelihood than other workers of
being forced into marginal kinds of work which is low paid,
part time and with little or no security. All this means that
worker solidarity must not stop at those who are inside 'the
house of labour'. Wage solidarity strategies which directly
seek to narrow the wage gap are needed to address the low
pay of workers left outside the organized labour movement.
In this respect campaigns to pressure the state to raise minimum wages and serious attempts to unionize the unorganized are the basic programs needed to address the
problem of exploitation of low paid women and men.61
It has been pointed out that the problem for unions "is
to find a way to - simultaneously - comprehend the real
differences among women and between women and men,
without losing the thread of the similarities .••62 In the context of pay equity this means recognizing that large numbers
of women workers perform 'unskilled' work in the sense
of being controlled and having little control over the tasks
they perform. Many of these women will not benefit from
the equal value approach. For women who do benefit from
equal value, it also means recognizing that employers will
seek ways of minimizing the increased costs. This could
include contracting out or making other working class women and men bear the costs of the increased wage bill. In
75
Studies in Political Ecomomy
other words, while recognizing and dealing with gender (and
racial) divisions and needs among workers, we must not
lose sight of the dominant 'similarity' or cohesive fact that
defines and shapes the lives of all working class women
and men - the selling of labour power in a system dominated
by the private ownership of property and capital in which
the main goal is accumulation and appropriation of surplus
value.
The goal of closing the wage gap between men and women, as we have seen, has the potential to raise fundamental
questions concerning the operation of the labour process
and the hierarchical structuring of the work place based on
the operations of the capitalistic labour market. But also it
is a goal that, if defined narrowly (that is as only meaning
equal value in terms of comparisons based on job evaluation), has the potential to increase the already damaging
divisions between working class women and men, perhaps
in the long run undermining the very goal of narrowing the
wage gap. Which direction will be taken depends on the
capacity of the women's movement and unions to comprehend and act to overcome divisions based on gender and
race while at the same time strengthening worker solidarity.
In seeking to formulate wage solidarity strategies, however,
it may well be that equal value legislation places limits on
unions' organizational capacity to both develop and act on
such strategies. This is an important question which needs
to be examined in greater depth as a result of the current
experience of applying provincial pay equity legislation.
In raising these and future questions concerning pay equity we need to keep firmly in mind that the wage gap and
women's occupational segregation results not only from
gender discrimination but also from the class structuring of
the labour process and society in general. In other words,
women's occupational segregation into low paying jobs results from the complex interaction of gender and class forces
which are at play in the ongoing construction of the social
relations of production at the point of production, in the
family where labour power is reproduced, within the state
where legislation is both formulated and enacted, and in
society generally. To merely cast the problem of the wage
76
WarskettlEqual
Value
gap and women's lower pay as gender discrimination is to
miss the contribution that the cheaper labour of certain women has made to capital, and to miss the new initiatives
being undertaken by capital in restructuring work in the
search for lower labour costs. The strategy of equal value,
while attempting to attack the cultural denigration of women's work, cannot alone deal with the problem of the wage
gap and the use of women as cheap labour. Nonetheless,
in the context of a wider strategy, it is important for women's equality, both in the short and long run, that the
women's and labour movements seek out ways to mobilize
all members in support of closing the wage gap and reducing
the differentials between higher and low paid workers.
These are goals which need to be placed at the heart of
unions' bargaining strategies.
Notes
Financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's
Strategic Research Programme is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is
a revised version of a paper presented to the annual meeting of the Canadian
Political Science Association, Quebec City, June 1989. I would like to
thank Pat Armstrong, Isabella Bakker, Andrew Jackson, Donald Swartz
and many women in the union movement for their helpful comments on
earlier drafts. Thanks are due also to John Myles for providing data and
comments, and to Frances Abele for her thorough editorial work. Despite
all this help the paper remains my responsibility.
1.
2.
Statistics Canada reported that women who worked full-time and
full year, earned an average of $21,012 in 1987, which was 65.9
percent of the $31,865 average for comparable male workers. This
ratio is about the same as a year earlier and less than 4 percent
higher than 10 years earlier. Reported in TM Globe and Mail 24
December 1988.
For summaries of this research see Morley Gunderson and Frank
Reid "Sex Discrimination in the Canadian Labour Market: Theories,
Data and Evidence," (Woman's Bureau of Labour Canada, Equality
in the Work Place Discussion Paper Series A, Toronto, 1981);
Michael D. Ornstein, "Gender Wage Differentials in Canada: A
Review of Previous Research and Theoretical Framework,"
(Woman's Bureau of Labour Canada, Equality in the Work Place
Discussion Paper Series A, Ottawa, 1982) and Ornstein, "Accounting for Gender Differentials in Job Income in Canada," (Woman's
Bureau of Labour Canada, Equality in the Work Place Discussion
Paper Series A, Ottawa, 1983).
77
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Studies in Political Ecomomy
3.
4.
S.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Andrew Jackson "The Rise of the Service Sector and the Quality
of Jobs: A Labour Perspective," (Canadian Labour Market and
Productivity Centre. Labour Issue Papers, December 1988. No.3),
pp. 8-13. Also. it was reported by Statistics Canada that more than
90 percent of jobs created between 1981 and 1986 went to women.
2 March 1988.
The policy capturing method is another alternative which is gaining
popularity. For example it is being applied in the health sector in
Manitoba, to public employees in Ontario and to administrative
employees at Carleton Univenity. Data regarding existing job content is collected and analyzed together with wage .etting practice.
in order to determine how male and female job. are currently valued.
It is a••umed that the extent of undervaluation of female job. will
then be apparent. There i. a great amount of controversy and disagreement over the effectiveness and validity of this method. For
a good description and discussion of problems with this method
see Carl J Cuneo. Pay Equity: Til. Labour - Feminist Challenge
(Toronto: 1990). pp. IOS-108.
The Swedish union movement' •• trategy of a solidaristic wage
policy unintentionally resulted in the lowest malelfemale wage gap
in any advanced capitali.t .ociety. In 1985 Swedish women earned
on average 91 percent of the average wage of men. compared to
64.9 percent for the Canadian case. National Committee on Pay
Equity. "Closing the Wage Gap: An International Perspective,'
(Washington. 1988). See alsc Ronnie Steinberg Ratner. "The Policy
and Problem: Overview of Seven Countrie s," in R.S. Ratner (ed.),
Equal Employment Policy for Women: Strategies for Implementation
in the United States. Callada and Western Europe (philadelphia:
1980). The demand of the Front Commune in Quebec in 1972 for
a minimum of $100 a week i. another example of unintended consequences in that it mainly benefited women clerical and hospital
workers.
As a result of a three month strike clerical worken gained 46 percent
increases. raising their monthly income. from $943 to $1377.
A number of different wage solidarity option. can be adopted by
union. to decrease the differential between female and male
workers, including the removal of increment step •• acro •• -the-board
wage increases rather than percentage increases, equalization of
base rates. integrating male and female pay line. and minimum
entry level rates. For explanations of these options see The Canadian
Union of Public Employee. National Executive Board. "A Co-ordinated National Strategy For CUPE Memben on Pay Equityl Equal
Pay For Work of Equal Value." (20 September 1986). p, S.
Helen Remick (ed.), Comparable Worth and Wage Discrimination:
Technical Possibilities and Political Realities (philadelphia: 1984);
Cynthia Cockburn, Brothers - Male Dominance and Technological
Change (London: 1983); and Jane Gaskell. "Conceptions of Skill
and the Work of Women: Some Historical and Political I••ues,' in
Roberta Hantilton and Michele Barrett (eds.), The Politics of Diversity (London: 1986), pp. 361-384.
Pat Armstrongand Hugh Armstrong.Til. DOllble Ghetto: Canadian
Women and Their Segregated Work (Toronto: 1984); Charlene
78
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WarskettlEqual
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
IS.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
2S.
Value
Gannage, Double Day, Double Bind: Women Garment Worurs
(Toronto: 1986); Graham S. Lowe, Women in tM Administrative
Revolution (Toronto: 1987) and Rosemary Crompton & Gareth Jones
White Collar Proletariat: Deskilling and Gender in Clerical Work
(London: 1984).
Morna Ballatyne, "A Critical Approach to Pay Equity," (Paper
presented to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement
of Women [CRIAW] Quebec City, November 1988).
Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (New York: 1976).
Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital p. 447. His approach emphasized the power of capital to "get its own way" and did not
focus explicitly on labour's struggle, either at the level of production
or politically, to prevent deskilling and the lowering of wages.
Neither did he focus on the contradictions inherent in the process
of deskilling itself, for example, on how individual capitals, in seeking to deskill workers, create new technologies and skills which
result in new and different categories of workers.
Crompton & Jones, White Collar Proletariat ... pp. S9-65.
Lowe, Women in th« Administrative Revolution p. 177.
Gannage, Double Day, Double Bind: Women Garment Worurs p.
170.
Pat and Hugh Armstrong, The Double Ghetto (Toronto: 1986), p.
S1.
To make definitions of control operational, I used 174 occupations
from the Canadian Classification and Dictionary of Occupations
(CCDO) with a General Educational Development (GED) score of
4 or higher. People counted (1,487,930 women and 2,27S,200 men)
under these occupations are considered to exercise significant self
control in terms of autonomous thought and action. Of the 174
occupations, 68 are considered to give the incumbents (407,S2S
women and 1,106,790 men) significant control over others. Data
was provided by John Myles, see also John Myles "The expanding
middle: some Canadian evidence on the deskilling debate,"
Canadian Review 0/ Anthropology and Sociology 2S/3 (1988), Appendix A for explanations of the GED score.
Stephen Wood (ed.), TM Degradation o/Work? Skilling, Deskilling
and the Labour Process (London: 1982), pp. 17-18.
Gregory S. Kealey, Toronto Worurs Respond to Industrial
Capitalism 1867-1892 (Toronto: 1980), pp. 83-97.
Cockburn BrotMrs - Male Dominance ...
Gaskell "Conceptions of Skill and the Work of Women ...•• pp, 378379.
Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain (New York: 1979), p. 19S. Although it should be emphasized that while this may be called
'consent', the measure of implicit coercion was quickly revealed
when the rules on the shop floor were transgressed.
A problem with Edwards' analysis in Contested Terrain is that
management appears to conspire to get its own way by dividing
workers into different kinds of labour markets.
Lowe, Women in th« Administrative Revolution; and Crompton &
Jones, White-Collar Proletariat ...
Crompton & Jones, White-Collar Proletariat ... p, 243- 2S0.
79
Studies in Political Ecomomy
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
80
See Anne Showstack Salloon who argues that "neither the domestic
sphere, nor the world of work, nor the welfare state 'fit' the changed
world of women ••.••. To the extent that women are forced simply
to do more and to accept a double shift, they, and to a lesser degree
their families, absorb the costs of their new role leaving institutions
and the male role intact." "Women's new social role: contradictions
of the welfare state," in A. Showstack Sassoon (ed.), Women and
th, Stat, (London: 1987), p, 181
Canadian Union of Public Employees, "Heading 'Em Off At The
Pay Gap: The Pay Equity Issue in Ontario Board of Education Locals" (prepared by Don Wells for Ontario Educational Institutes
Coordinating Committee Conference, October 3-5, 1986), pp. 11-13.
The Glob, and Mail 3 December 1988, p. 8.
Public Service Alliance of Canada, Equal Pay For Work of Equal
Val",: Do YOIl Have It? (Ottawa: 1986). Interview with Elizabeth
Millar, Head of Classification Division, Public Service Alliance of
Canada, April, 1989.
Personal communication with Elizabeth Millar, Head of Classification, Public Service Alliance of Canada, April 1988.
Julie White, Women and Unions (Ottawa: 1980), p, 8.
The principle of equal value is enshrined in a restricted manner in
a number of different legal jurisdictions in Canada in one of three
ways: (I) through a complaint driven process; (2) through a proactive requirement on the employer to initiate plans; or (3) a combination of complaint and pro-active methods. Pay equity laws in
Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island require
the employer to initiate plans in accordance with a set time table.
These are one time provisions. At a certain date pay equity will
be assumed to be implemented and the pro-active requirements on
employers will cease to have effect. In some jurisdictions a complaint process will remain in place.
Debra Lewis, Just Giv« Us The MOMy: A Discussion of Wag, Discrimination and Pay Equity (Vancouver: 1988), pp. 81-94.
David F. Noble describes how the National Board of Personnel
Classification came into being and comments that "the movement
to standardize measure and materials for industry was now coupled
with the movement similarly to standardize human beings."
America by Design: Scienc« T,chnology and th, Ris« of Corporat,
Capitalism (New York: 1977), p. 231.
For example this is the case for employees under the Public Service
Staff Relations Act who are mainly employed in government departments in the federal sector.
Helen Remick, "Dilemmas of Implementation: The Case of Nursing," in Remick (ed.), Comparabl, Worth ... p, 99. Traditional job
evaluation is referred to as the a priori approach, a more recent
variant used specifically in equal value comparisons is called the
policy capturing approach. This latter technique uses a statistical
analysis of the firm ".. the basis for creating factor and factor
weights." Ronnie Steinberg & Lois Haignere, "Equitable Compensation: Methodological Criteria For Comparable Worth," (Center
For Women in Government, New York, 1985), p. 5.
WarskettlEqual Value
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
SO.
51.
Helen Remick and Ronnie Steinberg, "Technical Possibilities and
Political Realities: Concluding Remarks," in Remick (ed.), Comparable Worth ... p. 289.
Pat Armstrong,Predominantly Female Sectors: Health Care (Report
prepared for The Pay Equity Commission, Government of Ontario,
1988); and M. Suzanne Findlay, Pay Equity in Female-Dominated
Establishments: A Profile of the Community and Social Service Sector (Report prepared for the Pay Equity Commission of Ontario,
1988).
The legislation does not allow proponional value comparisons to
be made. For example the conclusion that the content of a secretary's
job is 120 percent of the value of a store keepers job would not
be a case for a pay adjustment under the legislation.
For example comparisons within the same establishment between
outside manual workers and lower level clerical workers will likely
be fruitful for women.
Steinberg & Haignere, "Equitable Compensation: Methodological
Criteria..." p. 7.
Richard Hyman, "Inequality, Ideology and Industrial Relations,"
British Journal of Industrial Relations XW2 (July 1974), p. 184.
Norman D. Willis and Associates, "Guide To Position Measurement:
Equal Pay For Work Of Equal Value Study" (undated).
Joan Acker, "Comparable Worth: The Oregon Case," in Ronnie
Steinberg (ed.), State's Experience with Comparable Worth
(philadelphia: 1987).
Willis and Associates, "Guide To Position Measurement..." p. 6.
Ibid. p. 7.
Johanna Brenner, "Feminist Political Discourses: Radical Versus
Liberal Approaches to the Feminization of Poverty and Comparable
Wonh," Gender & Society 1/4 (December 1987), p. 451.
Interview with PSAC representative
on the federal Joint
UnionlManagement Master Evaluation Committee.
See Phebe-Jane Poole "Is Employment Equity Legislation Working?
An Examination of Women in Banking," (Canadian Centre for
Policy Alternatives, Ottawa, September 1989). The study reveals
that proponionally women have received fewer promotions than
men even though they constitute a larger percentage of the banks
work force. To make matters worse banks during the 1980s have
decreased the number of full time female employees and increased
the number of pan time female employees.
Chartered banks come under the provisions of section 11 of the
Canadian Human Rights Act which requires equal pay for work of
equal value. In response to the legislation, the large chanered banks
have put in place unified job evaluation systems but these have
made little difference to the pay of the large majority of women
working in the banking industry. A former director of personnel
for the Bank of Nova Scotia pointed out that the bank "had a totally
integrated evaluation system for years. If you evaluate jobs using
non-discriminatory measures, then you're in compliance with the
act." Reponed in The Globe and Mail 27 December 1986.
See Heather Jon Maroney, "Feminism at Work," in Heather Jon
Maroney and Meg Luxton (eds.), Feminism and Political Economy.
81
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Studies in Political Ecomomy
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
81
Womell's Work, Womell's Struggle (Agincourt: 1987) for an interesting account of this struggle.
Interviews with women in federal sector unions conducted between
October 1988 and April 1989. It should be noted that the Public
Service Alliance of Canada (pSAC) has been the most active union
in laying equal value complaints before the Canadian Human Rights
Commission. An important reason for this is the effort and commitment of Elizabeth Millar, Head of the PSAC's Classification
division, in researching, preparing and processing complaints.
Established job evaluation firms such as Willis Associates, Hay and
Aitken who constructed and used biased job evaluation schemes
for decades have received lucrative contracts to implement pay equity plans by employers in the federal, Ontario and Manitoba sectors.
Often there is little attempt to remove gender bias and discrimination
on the part of the consultants. See, for example, Joan Acker, "Comparable Worth: The Oregon Case," regarding problems with the Pay
Equity study conducted by Hay Associates.
In the federal Joint Union/Management Evaluation study, the PSAC
has appointed rank and file women to the committees doing the
evaluations. This has resulted in a greater awareness among some
parts of the membership of management's control over the structuring of the skill hierarchy.
For example CUPE has been seeking to negotiate pay equity settlements which adopt a simplified approach to the wage gap by
integrating male and female pay lines. See The CUPE National
Executive Board, "Co-ordinated National Strategy For CUPE Members on Pay Equity ...••; and CUPE Pay Equity Newsletter, Equal
Times, #2, undated.
Diane Barsoski, "A Case Study of Pay Equity Implementation,"
(paper presented at the Gordon Group Conference on 'Pay Equity',
Toronto, December 9, 1986). In spite of the implementation of pay
equity in the Bank of Nova Scotia, 77.2 percent of their female
employees earn less than $25,000, while 81 percent of male employees earn over $35,000. See Phebe-Jane Poole, "Is Employment
Equity Legislation Working?"
Discussions with officials in the Ontario Pay Equity Commission,
July 1988. This is also the case for all other provinces which have
pay equity legislation in place.
Brenner, "Feminist Political Discourses ...•• p, 461. Jane Jenson
makes a similar point with regards to women in the French labour
movement, see "Legacies of the French Women's Movement:
Mobilisation of 'Difference' in the Labour Movement," (paper prepared for the Annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science
Association, Winnipeg, June 1986).
Personal Communication with elected CUPE Official in Ontario
division.
Since 1980 employment growth in the business and consumer services has grown by over 34 percent. While some of these have
been 'good' jobs in terms of pay and benefits there is a polarization
btween these and the 'bad' jobs found mainly in consumer services
and parts of the business service sector. Furthermore, there has
been a significant downward shift in wages for consumer sector
WarskettlEqual
61.
62.
Value
jobs between 1981 and 1986. It is these jobs which are filled by
women and youth and are mainly non-unionized. So, while on the
one hand women and unions have been pressuring for pay equity
legislation, on the other there has been a significant growth in lower
paid jos which has resulted in new inequities within the working
class. See J. Myles, G. Picot and T. Wannell, "Wages and Jobs in
the 1980's: Changing Youth Wages and The Declining Middle,"
(Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper #17, Statistics Canada,
October, 1988).
For an outline of this kind of approach see Ontario Federation of
Labour "Still a Long Way From Equality," (Document 3, 32nd Annual Convention, November 28-December I, 1988).
Jane Jenson, "Legacies of the French Women's Movement ....•• p.
21.
83