Comparable Pay A Pipe Dream

The National Organization For Women (NOW) has decreed that water flow up hill.  All that remains is compliance.  Surely Congress will cooperate and repeal the law of gravity.

Feminists - they of burning bras and equal rights amendment - have not been able to bring human nature or the U.S. economic system to heel.  Nevertheless, they have one notable achievement to their credit.  Equal pay for equal work is the law of the land, even if it is frequently ignored.

Having struck out on its fling at trying to elect a woman vice president, NOW returns to the economic fray with a campaign of "comparable pay for comparable work."  The theory is that pay for traditional "female" jobs should be the same as for typical "male" jobs if they are the same in worth to the employer.

Clerical workers at Yale University currently are conducting a prolonged strike for pay equaling that of many teachers - on the grounds administrative personnel are just as essential to operation of the institution.

Public office secretaries in the states of California and Washington have filed legal suits demanding back pay, damages and higher salaries on the basis of comparable worth.  It will be interesting to see if the courts will attempt to make law in these cases, as they have in so many other instances.

There is not too much wrong with the theory of comparable pay - just in its practical application.

Who is to determine whether dissimilar work is equally important?  Certainly not some nameless office workers in an obscure government bureau.  A committee of unionists and employers, of course, would be a stalemate.  Would you want a third-party panel of consumer advocates setting your wages?

Employers, predictably, are screaming.  Conditions vary from business to business, industry to industry, region to region.  Every enterprise is structured differently - even if devoted to providing the same product to the same market.

Only the day-to-day manager can know the intimate problems and allocate resources accordingly.  Only the owner can decide if, where and how to risk his savings and profits.

Clarence Pendleton, Black chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, describes the comparable pay proposal as "probably the looniest idea since Looney Tunes came on the screen."

Career women complain they receive only 59 cents in pay to a man's dollar.  They contend the difference is arbitrary.  However, their beef should be directed toward their own gender.  It is competition that keeps women's wages at prevailing rates, not inherent greed of male employers.

All labor is subject to the forces of supply and demand - just as any other goods or services.  As long as some women in an area will work for $4 an hour, a hard-pressed employer will use that labor before he will assume a voluntary wage burden of $4.10 an hour.  An employer who pays $5 for labor for which his competitor pays one-fifth less will soon be bankrupt with no jobs to offer.

Women will accept lower wages than a man for several reasons.

First of all, the competition from other women is keener.  There are proportionately fewer "suitable" jobs for women than for men.  Women activists assert, with some justification, that this is an unfair handicap.  Efforts of women to enter previously all-male occupations - such as the military, safety forces and heavy industry - is an effective assault on artificial barriers.

Ironically it is male workers - not employers - who most resist integration of women.  As excess female labor competes, wage rates are driven lower.

Women also trade off higher wages for special privileges.  For better or worse, the family revolves around the mother, the giver of life.  Her family has first call on her time and energy.  A woman will subordinate her job to have a baby, take care of sick children, cook for her family, go with her husband on his vacation.

In return for a competitive labor cost, employers of women adjust work schedules to fit the special needs of mothers and wives.

Family priority will always put women at a disadvantage in the commercial working world.  An employer faced with hiring a man or woman of equal ability at equal-comparable pay tends to favor the man who will be able to subordinate his family to his job.

Cultural and gender realities make it tough for the single, working woman who by choice or circumstances disdains the role of matriarch.

In time, equal pay for the same type of work may become universal in the United States.  A law based on easily recognized standards is enforceable and by falling equally on all employers is equally factored into prices.  Thus, competition supposedly is eliminated.

The great difficulty with reaching this beguiling goal is that competition today is worldwide, and U.S. laws can't regulate foreign work forces.  There are hordes of hungry people overseas begging for the opportunity to work for less money than desperate women in this country.

Reluctantly we must conclude that equal pay for equal work is counter-productive, and comparable pay for comparable work is a pipe dream.

PARTING SHOTS

• Democrat party leaders met in the Virgin Islands to decide future strategy.  It was a perfect spot.  There they learned the "limbo" - how to creep forward while leaning over backward.
• President Reagan has come up with a "simplified" tax plan.  The Bureau of Internal Revenue Service is to cut rates and eliminate deductions.  We're suspicious.  A government bureau is where the taxpayer's shirt is kept.

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