Rights Panel Rejects Comparable Worth Pay

A bitterly divided Civil Rights Commission voted Thursday to reject the concept of comparable worth, which calls for equal pay for jobs that are different in type but similar in value.

In its 5-2 vote to adopt a staff report on the issue, the commission called on the Justice Department to “resist comparable worth doctrine” whenever it arises in court. And the panel urged Congress, the courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to leave the comparable worth issue to “market factors,” such as job qualifications.

Opposition Reaffirmed

John V. Wilson, a Justice Department spokesman, reaffirmed the department’s opposition to comparable worth and said that any intervention “would depend on the case.”

The commission’s recommendation, which is advisory only and does not carry the force of law, came after 2 1/2 hours of contentious debate. But even before the vote, the panel had distributed a news release on the staff report, and women and labor unions had launched a barrage of criticism in anticipation of the decision.

In a sharply worded statement, Judy Goldsmith, president of the National Organization for Women, called the action “an abomination.” She charged that the report was “biased, absurdly one-sided,” and that the commission “has profoundly and thoroughly betrayed the public trust it once commanded.”

The report acknowledges that a wage gap exists, but attributes the gap not necessarily to sex discrimination but to other factors. One, it suggests, is women’s practice of choosing their educations with the expectation of having children. It also cites an “intermittency” in the women’s work force and “the desire of a number of women” to get jobs “which accommodate their family roles.”

During the commission’s debate on the report, Chairman Clarence M. Pendleton Jr., who in November called comparable worth “the looniest idea since ‘Loony Tunes’ came on the screen,” described it as “a disingenuous attempt to restructure our free-enterprise system into a state-controlled economy under the false guise of fairness.”

But Mary Frances Berry and Blandina Cardenas Ramirez, the two commissioners who usually vote against the conservative majority, hailed the concept in a joint statement as “an important tool in the arsenal for attacking employment discrimination.” Both women voted against the report, and Francis S. Guess abstained because he might hear cases involving the issue as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Labor.

Called Insufficient

At one point during the debate, Berry said that the commission’s two days of consultations in June with experts on comparable worth were insufficient to draw any conclusions about it.

However, Morris B. Abram, the panel’s vice chairman, called the consultations “full and balanced” and said that “the repetitious charge” that women earn appreciably less pay on the average than men “obscures the significant fact that women work less hours, have less seniority and work more intermittently.”

Commissioner Robert A. Destro, who, like Abram, voted for the report, called the wage gap “an unfortunate economic reality” but said that to impose “an impossible burden of proof on employers is neither fairness nor justice. The civil rights laws should not be used for that purpose.”

The commission, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, historically has had a significant impact on shaping legislation, acting as a barometer gauging the nation’s attitudes on civil rights and as a champion of liberal causes. But when President Reagan took office in 1981, he set out to recast the group and succeeded in doing so after an acrimonious battle with members of Congress and civil rights groups.

Dissolution Urged

Since then, the eight-member commission has repeatedly taken positions on civil rights that are contrary to those of most traditional civil rights activists. Many of them have called for dissolution of the commission, charging that it has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Administration.

In its report Thursday, the commission reflected views that have been expressed by Administration officials, most notably William Bradford Reynolds, former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division and now associate attorney general.

In a speech in Washington last month, Reynolds told a symposium at the Georgetown University Law Center that unfairly low pay scales for women can be addressed by current laws and that comparable worth conflicts with “the marketplace factors of supply and demand.”

Another supporter of the Administration’s conservative views on social issues was named Thursday as staff director for the commission. Max Green, assistant staff director for programs and policy, will succeed Linda Chavez, who has been appointed White House public liaison officer.

Will Add to Controversy

The scathing reaction by civil rights activists to the commission’s report was a significant demonstration of the passion surrounding the issue of comparable worth. But the panel’s action probably will be used by the Administration to justify its opposition to the concept--opposition in line with business interests--and it almost certainly will add to the controversy over the issue.

Proponents of comparable worth argue that women historically have been relegated to undervalued jobs; for example, as nurses, clerical workers and secretaries. They say that this situation has resulted in an unfair wage gap, with women overall earning about 60 cents for every dollar earned by men, and with minority women faring even worse.

Under the comparable worth concept, a female secretary could be paid the same as, say, a truck driver if their jobs were deemed comparable in value. Opponents of the idea have argued that it would be impossible to fairly determine whether one job is worth as much as another and that the marketplace should decide how much a person earns, as long as the worker is protected by anti-discrimination laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.