U.S. Backs Dismissing Comparable Worth Suit : Justice Dept. Files Brief in Appeal of Illinois Case, Calls Plan ‘a Mockery of the Ideal of Pay Equity’

The Reagan Administration took its criticism of the controversial concept of “comparable worth” one step further Friday, filing a court brief siding with the state of Illinois against nurses seeking higher pay on the grounds that they do not earn as much as men in similar, but not identical, jobs.

Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds, in explaining the Administration’s decision to file its first “friend of the court” brief in such a case, said in a statement: “Congress, the courts and this Administration have long advocated ‘equal pay for equal work.’ ” That right is spelled out in the 1963 Equal Pay Act.

‘Subjective Evaluation’

But Reynolds, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, insisted: “The comparable worth theory, however, makes a mockery of the ideal of pay equity, advancing instead the thesis that equal pay should be provided to men and women in remarkably different jobs on the basis of a subjective evaluation by some ‘expert’ that the two jobs can be called ‘comparable.’ ”

The brief, filed with the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, urges the court to simply uphold a lower court ruling last April dismissing the nurses’ claims.

The Administration’s move drew immediate and sharp criticism from advocates of the concept, who see it as their most effective tool in closing the historical gap between lower-paying jobs traditionally held by women and better paid ones held by men.

Those who support using comparable worth as a basis for pay scales insist that sex discrimination accounts for the fact that teachers routinely are paid less than truck drivers and nurses less than house painters, even though nurses and teachers typically require greater training.

“No matter how hard the Reagan Justice Department tries to turn back the clock on civil rights, the Supreme Court has made it clear that sex-biased wage discrimination is illegal,” said Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “The shame of this action is that the court and the Justice Department are trying to deny Illinois state employees their day in court--and, therefore, deny them a full hearing of the facts.”

The union has led the court fight for comparable worth, winning in 1984 what is considered the most important victory thus far--a case in which a federal judge ordered Washington state to pay female employees up to $1 billion in back wages. The state had refused to act on its own study of wage rates, which found that it was not paying enough for jobs in professions dominated by women.

A spate of court cases has been filed since then, and some areas--the city of Los Angeles among them--have voluntarily moved to begin basing wages on an evaluation of such factors as the skills required for a job and the working conditions demanded. In most cases, they have hired independent consultants to evaluate and compare the demands of various jobs.

The Administration, agreeing with opponents of the idea, insists that wages should be set on the basis of the demand and supply of workers for individual jobs. President Reagan has called comparable worth “a cockamamie idea . . . (that) would destroy the basis of free enterprise.”

In its brief, the Justice Department contended that implementing comparable worth “would ignore market realities and lead to a massive restructuring of the nation’s economy.” It insisted that the Washington state ruling applied only to the circumstances of that case and was too narrow to be construed as a judicial endorsement of comparable worth.

“Such a scheme produces no winners,” Reynolds said, adding that it would transform the courts into “a ‘central planning commission’ that establishes ‘proper’ wages for virtually every employer, public and private, in our country.”