Payroll Articles
Equal Pay for Equal Work
A federal law, the Equal Pay Act (29 U.S.C. ยง206), requires employers to pay all Employees equally for equal work, regardless of their gender. It was passed in 1963 as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act.
While the Act technically protects both women and men from gender discrimination in pay rates, it was passed to help rectify the problems faced by women workers because of sex discrimination in employment. And in practice, this law has almost always been applied to situations where women are being paid less than men for doing similar jobs.
The wage gap has narrowed slowly since 1980, when women's earnings were only 60% of men's; the 2000 figure has women earning about 75% as much as working men. But the Equal Pay Act likely has little to do with it. The law's biggest weakness is that it is strictly applied only when men and women are doing the same work. Since women have historically been banned from many types of work and had only limited entree to managerial positions, the Equal Pay Act in reality affects very few women.
To successfully raise a claim under the Equal Pay Act, you must show that two Employees, one male and one female:
- are working in the same place
- are doing equal work, and
- are receiving unequal pay.
You must also show that the Employees in those jobs received unequal pay because of their genders.
Who Is Covered?
The Equal Pay Act applies to all Employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which means virtually all Employees are covered. But in addition, the Equal Pay Act covers professional Employees, executives and managers -- including administrators and teachers in elementary and secondary schools.
Determining Equal Work
Jobs do not have to be identical for the courts to consider them equal. In general, the courts have ruled that two jobs are equal for the purposes of the Equal Pay Act when both require equal levels of skill, effort and responsibility and are performed under similar conditions.
There is a lot of room for interpretation here, of course. But the general rule is that if there are only small differences in the skill, effort or responsibility required, two jobs should still be regarded as equal. The focus is on the duties actually performed. Job titles, classifications and descriptions may weigh in to the determination, but are not all that is considered.
The biggest problems arise where two jobs are basically the same, but one includes a few extra duties. It is perfectly legal to award higher pay for the extra duties, but some courts have looked askance at workplaces in which the higher-paying jobs with extra duties are consistently reserved for workers of one gender.
EQUAL PAY V. COMPARABLE WORTH
The Equal Pay Act covers only situations where men and women are performing jobs that require equal skill, effort and responsibility and are performed under similar circumstances. Often, however, men and women are doing different jobs at different payrates, despite the fact that the value of their work is equal. Disputes over this type situation are typically lumped under the term comparable worth. When Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, legislators squirmed to choose their words carefully. Representative Goodell (R-NY), one of the Act's sponsors, explained: "We went from 'comparable' to 'equal,' meaning that the jobs should be virtually identical -- that is, that they would be very much alike or closely related to each other."
Determining Equal Pay
In general, pay systems that result in Employees of one gender being paid less than the other gender for doing equal work are allowed under the Equal Pay Act if the pay system is actually based on a factor other than gender, such as a merit or seniority system.
Example: In 1970, the Ace Widget Company was founded and initially hired 50 male widget makers. Many of those men are still working there. Since 1990, the company has expanded and hired 50 more widget makers, half of them female. All of the widget makers at Ace are doing equal work, but because the company awards raises systematically based on seniority or length of employment, many of the older male workers earn substantially more per hour than their female co-workers. Nevertheless, the pay system at Ace Widget does not violate the Equal Pay Act because its pay differences between genders doing equal work are based on a factor other than gender.