Pay Equity: Fairness is in the Eyes of the Beholder
The Work Review, Vol.2, Issue 1, April 2005, a publication of the Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Pay Equity: Fairness is in the
Eyes of the Beholder
BY HERMANN SCHWIND
Statistics from StatsCanada have shown for years that women earn about 80% of men’s wages and salaries. Unions’ and women’s groups have used this wage gap as evidence of discrimination against women and as a basis for demands for more effective legislation on pay equity. They will not accept any evidence that this is impossible, i.e., that there are no objective measures to assess the monetary value of a job and that any assessment result will be a political decision. They use as an example that different jobs can be compared like fruits. Apples and oranges can be compared according to their nutritional values, measurable in calories. A comparable measure for jobs would be point values, i.e., points for compensable factors. The problem remains that the development of this measure is purely subjective from many perspectives.
It begins with the selection of members for the Job Evaluation (JE) Committee (JEC), the team that evaluates every job in an organization. The JEC should have a representative from every important interest group in the organization but ideally not more than seven (fewer is preferable to manage committee meetings effectively). The characteristic of such a member is decisiveness. If a group selects a representative who is knowledgeable about JE, communicates persuasively, and even better, pounds the table, this representative will score more points for jobs relevant to her group. This selection is the first inequality in the evaluation process.
The next step is the weighing of the compensable factors. What weight should be given to education versus experience versus skills versus job hazards? This decision, again, is arbitrary and will be decided by opinions and arguments, not objective measures.
Then the
Pay Equity: Fairness is in the
Eyes of the Beholder
BY HERMANN SCHWIND
Statistics from StatsCanada have shown for years that women earn about 80% of men’s wages and salaries. Unions’ and women’s groups have used this wage gap as evidence of discrimination against women and as a basis for demands for more effective legislation on pay equity. They will not accept any evidence that this is impossible, i.e., that there are no objective measures to assess the monetary value of a job and that any assessment result will be a political decision. They use as an example that different jobs can be compared like fruits. Apples and oranges can be compared according to their nutritional values, measurable in calories. A comparable measure for jobs would be point values, i.e., points for compensable factors. The problem remains that the development of this measure is purely subjective from many perspectives.
It begins with the selection of members for the Job Evaluation (JE) Committee (JEC), the team that evaluates every job in an organization. The JEC should have a representative from every important interest group in the organization but ideally not more than seven (fewer is preferable to manage committee meetings effectively). The characteristic of such a member is decisiveness. If a group selects a representative who is knowledgeable about JE, communicates persuasively, and even better, pounds the table, this representative will score more points for jobs relevant to her group. This selection is the first inequality in the evaluation process.
The next step is the weighing of the compensable factors. What weight should be given to education versus experience versus skills versus job hazards? This decision, again, is arbitrary and will be decided by opinions and arguments, not objective measures.
Then the