The retailing industry has long recognized the importance of its women employees. It is natural in this business employing such a preponderance of female employees, that their importance be recognized in many ways—not the least of which is their right to earn coequal salaries with men in the same positions. In fact, there are many jobs in retailing which are better adapted to women employees—and experience has shown are much better performed by them than men. Thus, a policy of paying the rate for the job, without regard to the sex of the worker, is generally reflected in women’s pay checks in the retailing industry.
Our members are not so much concerned with the prospective legislative mandate to pay women on an equal basis with men as they are with (1) the need for a Federal statute and (2) the consequences of a blank check to be given to the Secretary of Labor to engage in ‘fishing expeditions,’ ultimately resulting in harassing retailers and, in some cases, punitive action.
[The proposed ‘comparable’ work standard is] so general and so vague as to give an administrator a grant of power which could destroy the sound wage structure which many industrial companies have worked for years to perfect.
There is little difference between men and women as regards their satisfactory performance in industry. Sound employment and personnel practices are applicable to both men and women are applicable to both men and women and no emphasis should be placed on any distinction between them as workers.
[W]e feel that in a free competitive economy, the task of equal pay to women workers is properly within the province of collective bargaining and not of police action by the government.
[Joining unions, not] perpetuat[ing] a principal based upon the assumption that women are wards of the state [is the best way to reduce inequality]…[But gender inequality is] deeply rooted in our civilization [and what inequality cannot be dealt with through collective bargaining can only be dealt with through] evolutionary processes.
[The proposal would] involve undue interference in the work relationship…interfere with efficient management, and prove disruptive to good relations between employer and employees.