Incomparable Worth: Pay Equity Meets the Market.

• Author: Whaples, Robert

Proponents of comparable worth (CW) argue that women are consistently underpaid because of discrimination in the labor market. Their solution is to try to legislate equal pay for work of equal value. In Incomparable Worth, Steven Rhoads argues that the benefits of such legislation do not outweigh the enormous costs. His evidence will strengthen the resolve of CW's opponents, convert many agnostics, and give CW's supporters nightmares.

Despite mainstream theoretical work predicting that CW will disrupt labor markets and cause inefficiency, supporters have convinced many that the actual implementation of CW programs is quite successful. Rhoads investigates three cases (Minnesota, Britain, and Australia), which are central to the proponents' argument. He demonstrates that many of the mainstream predictions have come true, and argues that the programs are failures because they have never produced "objective job evaluation results, though they have often obtained bizarre ones."

Take the case of Minnesota, whose law covers public employees. The biggest question of any CW system is, how are jobs to be compared? In Minnesota consultants use complex Job Evaluation Systems (JES). These may entail up to a thousand questions to determine exactly what is done on the job, and usually include the skills, responsibility, initiative, physical and mental effort and working conditions involved. The consultants assign points for each facet of the job, then add them up. Often, JES studies find that female-dominated jobs are paid less than male-dominated jobs with the same number of points. The law mandates that something be done to rectify this situation, usually granting wage increases to those in the female-dominated occupations.

Minnesota's plan is sold to national audiences as a triumphant success, however, Rhoads explains that the sales pitch contains much misinformation. For example, official estimates of added payroll costs from CW are biased downward by ignoring additional wages going to workers in underpaid male-dominated, and balanced occupations. Moreover, the Minnesota Department of Employee Relations brags about these low costs, while berating localities for not adopting stricter standards which would inflate the costs.

Rhoads also shows severe operational problems in Minnesota's CW process. He confirms predictions of arbitrary wage setting and consequent inefficiencies, but his critique is far more devastating, revealing that wage setting is prone...