Equal Pay For Equal Work Paper

Unequal Pay For Equal Work
Mark Schmitt
ORG303 –Applied Organizational Psychology
Colorado State University – Global Campus
Winsten-Bartlett, Cheryl
January 5, 2014

UNEQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK
For years many people have cried for equal pay for equal work. This has been a legal and ethical issue in our country for many decades. There are laws that govern this issue such as the Equal Pay Act. This law states that men and women working in the same workplace will be paid the same. This law was developed back in 1963 by the 88th United States Congress. It continues to say the work does not have to be identical but they must be substantially equal job content not position (EEOC). This law covers all forms of pay including
Liberty was running out of physical space to house the escalations and provisioning groups. A call for expanded hours of operation was demanded by executives of Bowl. Costs were higher at Liberty than Bowl and joining of the teams into one telephony system in a building already paid for with space was a financially correct decision. A team was challenged with making the transfer as smooth and quickly as possible. It was found that the skills needed to perform the work Liberty did would take a senior level employee in specialty fields within customer service to move in such a quick manner. No hiring was needed or required and by taking some of the most tenured agents from departments handling escalated calls was the answer to meet the new hours. Everything looked good, until the compensation review committee began evaluating the pay of the Liberty employees transferring in compared to the skilled Bowl employees. Some of the Bowl employees were found to be paid as high as double the rate of the Liberty employees and they would be performing the same work. Some of the frontline agents were going to be making more than not only their coach, but also their manager. The issue of equal pay for equal work was on the table and the Liberty employees were looking to see if laws were violated or were they just not valued as much to
A loss of trust between Liberty employees and Bowl management was actively talked about and not hidden. The Liberty employees felt their value diminished and that they were looked at as outsiders and not a part of the team of Bowl. The move had taken away their work balance relationships, extended their hours causing less favorable shift schedules, drop of seniority in the departments, and for what, to be paid less than the people they were training to do their exact same work. The self-esteem of the Liberty employees hit a low. Motivation to do quality work sunk within the team. Instead of receiving awards and acknowledgement management was facing a nearly hostile work force that was very important to the overall success of this