Pay Discrimination: Legal Issues and Implications for Research

• Date: 01 September 1982
• Author: GEORGE T. MILKOVICH,RENAE BRODERICK
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-232X.1982.tb00239.x
• Published date: 01 September 1982

GEORGE

T.

MILKOVICH

AND

RENAE BRODERICK”

Pay

Discrimination:

Legal

Issues

and

Implications

for

Research

BY

THE

LATE

SEVENTIES,

debate over pay discrimination began

to center on sex-based wage disparities, as reflected in the continuing gap

in earnings between male and female workers, and what is termed com-

parable worth. In the past few years, the literature on comparable worth

has burgeoned. Rather than rehashing the research related to differential

earnings and occupational attainments, we will try, in abbreviated form, to

review the legal definition of wage discrimination, and discuss some questions

for future research within that context.

Legal Definitions of Pay Discrimination

The definition of wage discrimination has been an issue since

the formation of the National War Labor Board during World War

I1

(National

War Labor Board,

1945).

For the Board, pay inequity problems involved two

questions: was it unfair to pay less to minorities and women performing work

equal to that performed by white males, and was it unfair to pay less to

minorities and women performing work comparable to white males’? Under

a policy of “equal pay for equal work” and through the comparison of the

content of specific jobs, the Board clearly answered the first question in

the affirmative. While not denying the legitimacy of the second question,

disputes involving wage differentials between jobs of clearly different work

content were referred back to the parties for negotiation of these differences.

Thus, in practice, the Board’s definition of wage discrimination, i.e., unequal

pay for equal work, focused on the content of the work and the determination

of what constitutes equal work.

Wage inequality and discrimination issues resurfaced in the sixties when

bills were introduced in Congress to prohibit employers from maintaining

wage differentials “for work of comparable character on jobs the performance

‘The authors are, respectively, Professor and Ph.D. Candidate, New

York

State School

of

Industrial

and Labor Relations, Cornell University.

INDUSTRIAL

RELATIONS,

Vol.

21, No.

3,

(Fall, 1982).

0

1982 by the Regents

of

the

University

of

California.

0019/8676/82/1015/309/$1.00

309