Wages and Women

Equal pay for equal work is a familiar slogan of the women's lib movement. It has also been the law of the land for large companies for a decade, but a law that was little noted nor long remembered. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court decided its first sex-discrimination wage case, and five of the "Nine Old Men" handed down a ruling that should be a sharp spur for industries to up women's wages.

The case involved Corning Glass Works. In the late 1920s, plants in New York and Pennsylvania began using automatic production and needed night-shift inspectors for the glassware and other items. The states' laws prohibited women from working evenings, and in order to induce men to do so, they were paid twice as much as women day inspectors. Even after women were allowed to work nights, the custom of hiring only men persisted. Though the wage difference shrank, the night inspectors continued to get higher pay. The Supreme Court has now concluded that the situation "reflected a job market in which Corning could pay women less than men for the same work"--just what the 1963 Equal Pay Act was trying to cure. Across-the-board night-shift differentials are O.K., said the court, but not differentials "based upon sex."

The court also concluded that the slighted women were entitled to back pay. At one plant, for instance, an individual woman who had worked as an inspector will collect an average of $780, and the full tab to Corning is expected to be at least $600,000.

Similar Suits. Such awards may become a trend. Two weeks ago, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. settled a similar suit by agreeing to pay $30 million to 25,000 managerial-employee victims of discrimination--most of them women. And in 1973 AT&T also agreed to pay $45.7 million to at least 36,000 nonmanagement employees. Last week, with federal investigators looking over their shoulders, Rutgers University officials revealed that $375,000 is being paid to women and minority-group faculty members who have been receiving lower salaries than white male colleagues. A Bethlehem Steel plant in Maryland is now facing a suit raising equal-pay questions, and a spokeswoman for the National Organization of Women says that other businesses likely to have the same problem are retail stores, banks, and textile and electronics manufacturers. If all that remedying does occur, it should begin to change the present ratio of pay scales. According to a recent Labor Department study of jobs, women who do work similar to men's earn 600 for every $1 earned by their male equals.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.