The Imposition of Comparative Worth - Assignment Example

Assignment 4 Comparable worth is a concept in employment strategy which emphasizes the need to pay workers according to the contribution which they make to the company. Most notably in the United States, many supporters of comparable worth see it as a way of fighting against the tendency to pay men more than women. The Equal pay act of 1963 and the Title VII of the Civil Rights act 1964 have already attempted to equalize pay for men and women. However, because of the market-based model of employment, companies can still pay women less by explaining that women are often less experienced due to the time is taken out for raising children.

However a points-based comparative worth model, if strictly implemented will change this, resulting in greater wealth for many women, once it is proven that they do in fact have comparable experience. This will of course make many families happy because of the increase in family income. While approximately 20 local governments across the United States have implemented the comparable worth system, will it ever take off within the private sector? One of the issues which comparable worth brings about is an increase in the running costs of a business.

This is because wages can only be equalized upwards and not downwards. For instance, in many companies, the cleaning staff is on lower wages than other blue-collared workers. Furthermore, in many white collared work areas, there is a strong variance in pay between roles which are regarded as executive versus clerical, when oftentimes there is little by way of comparable worth between them. The response of a comparable worth program on workers will depend upon the specific workers. The ones receiving a higher wage will be happy, whereas the others will probably feel undermined.

Executive workers in many organizations for instance will often feel that their wages reflect their higher social position within the organization. If they are now paid the same as a clerical worker, for instance, they will feel that their status is threatened. In the case of employers, they will almost certainly be against this system. Private enterprise unlike governmental agencies needs to keep costs down, and anything which threatens this will be seen negatively. In relation to short-term and long-term reactions; in the short term, the reaction of private industry would certainly be aggressively hostile.

Even if the government managed to insist on such a policy, it would certainly be a painful issue amongst businesses. Moving onto the effect in society itself, in the short term some benefits could be made because of the sudden shift upwards in a wealth of so many people and this would, in turn, boost consumer spending; however, in the long term, it would radically increase the cost base of private enterprise, which would raise inflation. This would more than likely result in a tendency to economic turndown in the long-term.

Personally, I am against the imposition of comparative worth been imposed on private enterprises. It may well work in the state sector because government agencies don’t have to make a profit in order to operate. However, some aspects of comparative worth could work. For instance, it would be a good idea for every business to carry out an audit of the comparative worth of employees, and where possible they should apptempt to provide workers with a fair deal. Finally, if individual companies make a transparent company policy around this, it can be used as a tool to improve management-worker relations, whereby workers can clearly see what kind of changes they need to make in order to progress up to the next pay scale within the organization.

Of course, this must be a broad interpretation of comparative worth, which will help companies to motivate staff, rather than as a tool to force employers to equalize wages across the board.