Partisan House Vote Backs Comparable Worth Study

The House, stepping gingerly into a national debate over the controversial issue of comparable worth, voted along party lines Wednesday to conduct a study of whether women and minorities in federal jobs are paid as much as white men in similar posts.

The legislation passed on a 259-162 vote, even though a number of House Republicans denounced it as a “wacko” attempt to impose government controls on the salaries of ordinary workers. Last year a similar measure barreled through the House with only six dissenting votes before dying in the Senate.

Wednesday’s House debate highlighted the growing success of the conservative crusade against the concept of equal pay for jobs with comparable skills. The legislation now goes to the more hostile Republican-led Senate, where its prospects for passage are uncertain.

The bill’s chief opponent, Rep. Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.), called the proposal by Rep. Mary Rose Oakar (D-Okla.) a step toward socialism, saying: “I know of no other way to characterize the government administration of prices.”

In an effort to attract broader political backing, Oakar had added studies of pay for racial and ethnic minorities to the legislation’s original survey of women’s pay. Conservative legislators had managed in spite of that to stall passage of the bill for months by filing stacks of hostile amendments.

‘Huge Political Issue’

On Wednesday, Oakar said the bill “has been made into a huge political issue,” although it would only examine pay discrimination and would contain no legal power to force changes in hiring or wage scales.

The idea of comparable worth gained legal standing in 1983 when a federal court ordered the state of Washington to pay $1 billion to women employees who had been paid less than male state workers in jobs requiring similar skills. Last month the Reagan Administration, which opposes the concept, scored its own legal victory, however, when a federal appeals court threw out the Washington decision after finding no evidence that the state had caused the pay differences.

Oakar’s bill would establish an 11-member commission to study federal pay and job scales to determine whether they are skewed by illegal sex, race or ethnic discrimination.

The study would include both economic analyses of jobs--covering such measurable factors as employees’ education levels and seniority--and “job content” analyses, which would compare the skills and effort required for different jobs to determine whether wages are equitable.

On Sept. 30, California Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed state legislation similar to that proposed by Oakar that would have set up an 11-member state commission to study pay differences among men and women in 6,000 job classifications.

No Dispute Over Pay

That the study would find pay differences is undisputed: Overall, women federal employees earn 63% of the salaries of their male counterparts, and an Office of Personnel Management survey suggests that more women work in lower-grade jobs, with more meager pay scales, than do men.

The political dispute centers on what, if anything, to do about it, and the study is expected to identify pay differences that cannot be explained by contrasts in job skills or economic factors and to propose ways to eliminate the disparities.

Supporters of the proposed study, including the National Organization for Women, B’nai B’rith and the AFL-CIO, view such pay disparities as evidence of discrimination against the lesser-paid groups.

In contrast, conservatives and some others, including many economists, argue that wages are largely set by the demand for labor and that a government effort to alter pay scales would distort the job market and disrupt the economy.

Passage of the bill sends a message to young people that “the politicians and bureaucrats are going to decide their worth in the job market--their talent, their skills, their enthusiasm . . . are unnecessary,” Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), said Wednesday.