[The bill would give the government] sweeping powers over industry [and make the secretary of labor] PROSECUTOR, JUDGE, AND JURY.
You can’t really blame the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for instance, for opposing the bill, chivalrous at heart as its members may be. For in addition to the possibility of added costs, there’s this problem: It’s a rare woman, we gather, who doesn’t think she is discriminated against on payday.
[The bill] is enough to give the boss of a lot of women workers the shudders. So much so that he may stop hiring women altogether. If that happens, pretty soon women would be right back in the place some men think they never should have left.
[We stand] with those who would eliminate injustice and inequality wherever it may exist….[But] We do not wish to see Federal legislation enacted which could create greater problems and bring about greater injustices.
It would give the Secretary of Labor vast new powers over private industry with authority to investigate complaints, conduct hearings, issue orders, regulations and interpretation, and initiate legal actions to enforce complaints. Moreover, it would project Government into the job evaluation process—a prerogative traditionally reserved to management.
[The bill would ensure] ‘Another vast Federal bureaucracy’ with an annual budget beginning at more than $1 million and the addition of 240 employees to Uncle Sam’s payroll. The organization suggests the ladies pursue their crusade through the collective bargaining process, rather than through legislation.
Any figures advanced to sustain a case that extensive rate discrimination exists, are likely to be misleading because they cannot represent the full extent to which the principle of equal pay for equal work exists throughout industry. While contract provisions might show the degree to which equal pay is embodied in collective bargaining agreements, they fail to indicate the far greater number of cases where employers of their own volition paid the same rates to men and women where jobs were equal, or where an identical wage scale is applicable to men and women although no specific ‘equal wage’ provision is contained in the agreement.
Then, too, State legislation is now effective in 21 States…In 1945 and since then each year, Federal legislation has been introduced to provide by governmental fiat equal or comparable pay, more often comparable. The Federal bills have all failed of passage [sic]. NAM took its position against them for reasons hereinafter stated. It now opposes the current bills to which this statement is directed although standing behind the principle they support otherwise better achievable through other sources.
…these bills grant extensive powers to the Secretary of Labor which permit of arbitrary application. For in proceeding under the law, the conclusion of the Secretary of Labor could not be upset by the courts, even if a company could prove that the jobs were not comparable, as long as the Secretary could show any substantial evidence that they were comparable.
The fact that men have been employed in industry over a longer period than have women in general, and also the fact that the average length of time devoted to industry by a man is greater than that of women, makes it natural that the jobs which require more experience and certain higher skills are more frequently assigned to men than to women.
