Equal pay for equal work
Encyclopedia
Equal pay for equal work is the concept that individuals doing the same work should receive the same remuneration. In America, for example, the law states that "employers may not pay unequal wages to men and women who perform jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility, and that are performed under similar working conditions within the same establishment."
It is most commonly used in a context of sexual discrimination, as equal pay for women
. Equal pay does not simply relate to basic salary but also to the full range of benefits, non salary payments, bonuses and allowances that are paid.
was signed into law in January 2009.
Free market supporters believe that government actions to correct gender pay disparity serve to interfere with the system of voluntary exchange. They see the fundamental issue is that the employer is the owner of the job, not the government or the employee. The employer negotiates the job and pays according to performance, not according to job duties. A private business would not want to lose its best performers by compensating them less and can ill afford paying its lower performers higher because the overall productivity will decline.
There are also specific affirmative defenses to the criticism above that government is forcing employers to pay less qualified workers the same as superior workers. The EPA's four affirmative defenses allows unequal pay for equal work when the wages are set "pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) ... any other factor other than sex[.]" If an employer can prove that a pay differential exists because of one of these factors, there is no liability.
It is most commonly used in a context of sexual discrimination, as equal pay for women
Equal pay for women
Equal pay for women is an issue regarding pay inequality between men and women. It is often introduced into domestic politics in many first world countries as an economic problem that needs governmental intervention via regulation...
. Equal pay does not simply relate to basic salary but also to the full range of benefits, non salary payments, bonuses and allowances that are paid.
Support for equal pay for equal work
The U.S. Democratic Party has historically supported legislating equal pay for equal work. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay ActLilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 is an Act of Congress enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on January 29, 2009....
was signed into law in January 2009.
Opposition to equal pay for equal work
Free market supporters believe that any legislation supporting equal pay for equal work does in fact harm the very groups the legislation aims to protect. It is believed that free market forces discriminative employers to pay for their prejudice where as an equal pay for equal work legislation would simply allow those same employers to have no consequence for their prejudice. To provide a simple example: In the case of an employer who holds an unfair prejudice against women, he will always hire the man given the requirement to pay both equally. However, if the women offers to be compensated slightly less than the man despite having equal talents, the employer will have to pay for his prejudice if he still hires the man. In this case, a competitor now has access to an employee who is both equally skilled and willing to work for less, which will thus put the discriminative employer at a competitive disadvantage.Free market supporters believe that government actions to correct gender pay disparity serve to interfere with the system of voluntary exchange. They see the fundamental issue is that the employer is the owner of the job, not the government or the employee. The employer negotiates the job and pays according to performance, not according to job duties. A private business would not want to lose its best performers by compensating them less and can ill afford paying its lower performers higher because the overall productivity will decline.
There are also specific affirmative defenses to the criticism above that government is forcing employers to pay less qualified workers the same as superior workers. The EPA's four affirmative defenses allows unequal pay for equal work when the wages are set "pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) ... any other factor other than sex[.]" If an employer can prove that a pay differential exists because of one of these factors, there is no liability.