By Murray Hopper
The writer, a Londoner, is a founding member of the Freedom Party of Ontario.
The Pay Equity Act proclaimed a year ago would have women's pay determined by the Ontario Pay Equity Commission rather than by market forces of supply and demand.
Unfortunately, despite good intentions, the legislation will fail, as always happens whenever political motivations and unproven assumptions replace economic truths and the rigors of the marketplace.
WAGE GAP: Indeed, the act's basic premise, that woman's work is undervalued, is false. There are valid reasons for the much-publicized but poorly-understood wage gap, none of which involves short-changing women. In fact, the gap can be almost entirely explained in one word: motherhood.
Consider the exactly opposite effect that marriage has on income: the husband's rises, the wife's falls. As children arrive, the husband, faced with increasing responsibilities, must work harder, seek overtime, promotions etc.; the wife on the other hand, because of family duties, may find no time for other work.
If any further proof of this argument is needed, consider the result of statistical comparisons of the incomes of never-married women and never-married men: the former make an astonishing 99.2 per cent of the incomes of their male counterparts (according to a 1979 government report: An Analysis of Earnings in Canada).
Listen to the story of one American firm where an active anti-discrimination stance was company policy. XYZ Corporation (a pseudonym for a real Fortune 500 company) employed about 6,000 men and women, of whom 5,500 were clerks and 500 were supervisors.
Given the exclusion of gender bias in promotions, company executives were surprised when a group of women employees sued the company, claiming that men were favored over women for promotion. On checking, the executives found, to their amazement, that a definite imbalance favoring men did indeed exist.
EXPLAINS DISCREPANCY: To find out why, they hired Hoffman Research Associates, who interviewed 850 clerks and supervisors (both male and female) selected at random. After analysing the results, the researchers announced that the explanation for the discrepancy lay in the differences in promotion-seeking behavior between men and women.
For example, when both sexes were asked if they were interested in promotion, men were almost twice as likely as women to say yes. Men were also twice as likely to request promotion. Oddly, only three per cent of the men and a minuscule one per cent of women thought that discrimination was a factor in non-promotion. Another interesting finding: marriage appeared to increase promotion-seeking behavior among highly-motivated men and decrease it among highly-motivated women.
Clearly, the imbalance came about, not from discrimination, but from differences in the social, cultural and family choices made by individual men and women. Such choices are private matters; they are not the business of any employer.
LAW REDUNDANT: Nor are they the business of any government. And yet these personal choices are at the very heart of the question which pay equity legislation purports to address. But the legislation is redundant; it offers a solution for which there is no problem. Given that fact, all the efforts which companies may put into developing and posting pay equity plans become just so much pointless and costly busy work.
The thought that working women might freely choose to put traditional family values or other personal preferences ahead of their jobs drives the radical feminists into a frenzy. These ladies of the left are committed to the view that all women are but helpless pawns in the games of men, lost forever unless the big guns of the state are there to blow away enemies. The day that members of any government-funded feminist pressure-group admit that pay equity legislation is folly will be the day that Conrad Black is keynote speaker at an NDP convention.
The pay equity commission is a perfect complement to this ill-advised legislation. It is completely one-sided in composition, being a collection of former Ontario government bureaucrats, union directors, university professors and the like. Notably absent are those whose presence might introduce balance; representatives of industry or economists, etc.
If this commission had been packed the other way round, with supporters of business, the howls of outrage would still be resounding across the province.
Like all statist bureaucracies, the commission, freed from all market disciplines, lacks the means to value anything. This is why, when government activities are privatized, savings of one-third to one-half are the norm.
Nor are such attempts at valuation necessary. To use the pay equity commission's own example, if the secretary wants the pay of the gardener, let her become a gardener; there's absolutely nothing stopping her.
VIOLATES RIGHTS: The commission, so concerned with justice for women, seems unaware of the many ways in which the implementation of their mandate violates individual rights.
The fixing of wage rates deprives both labor and management of their right of free contract; the power to enter business premises without a warrant and take pay records violates both the worker's right to keep such personal information secret, and the owner's right to immunity from arbitrary search and seizure; guaranteeing anonymity to a complainant denies the right of an accused to face his accuser.
But make no mistake about it, Commisar Buttinski and his apparatchiks will proceed - they have the law on their side and without doubt will enforce it, earnestly and without foreseeing the conquences of their actions.
CONSEQUENCES PREDICTABLE: Such consequences are predictable: fewer women in the work force. When employers are saddled with additional costs without offsetting benefits they will take this defensive measure: they will simply stop hiring women.
Process costs, plus additional costs of non-compliance (court challenges, relocation) will place a heavy burden on employers, employees and consumers alike. Only pay equity bureaucrats are immune, in their government cocoons, from any punishment for the undesirable consequences of their actions.
At this very moment, feminist groups are agitating for abolition of the clause in the act which exempts employers with up to nine employees. Look out, mom and pop, here come the pay police.
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last updated on April 28, 2002
