Race, Ethnicity, Sex All Factors in Unequal Wages, Study Finds

In the first study of its kind, a national coalition on pay equity Wednesday outlined how the U.S. work force is divided by race as well as gender, resulting in huge pay gaps between whites and nonwhites.

“Occupations with a disproportionate representation of people of color are paid less than predominately white male occupations of comparable value to the employer,” said the study by the National Committee on Pay Equity.

The study, funded by the Ford Foundation, used national census data and cited Los Angeles County, New York state and Washington state as places where “occupational segregation mirrors the national trend.”

Previous studies on pay equity have focused on sex discrimination, but officials of the committee said that theirs is the first national analysis of the issue to include the three factors of race, ethnicity and sex. The coalition is composed of 90 organizations, including labor unions, women’s and civil rights groups and law associations.

Pay Equity a ‘Remedy’

“Our results confirm what has long been the belief of many pay equity advocates,” Eileen Stein, board chairman of the committee, told a news conference. “Race, ethnicity and sex are all important factors in wage-setting and pay equity can be an effective remedy for race-based wage discrimination.”

The 180-page report lists jobs with disproportionate representations of blacks, Latinos, Asians, American Indians and whites, ranking those held predominately by black women as “the lowest paid of all occupations.” Those jobs include private household workers, cooks and welfare aides. Their average annual pay in 1980 was less than $8,000, the report said.

“People of color make up 16% of the labor force,” the report states, “and, with the exception of Asian men, are concentrated in low-paying jobs.”

Black men are disproportionately represented as stevedores, garbage collectors and baggage porters, the report said. Latino men are concentrated in jobs as farm workers, elevator operators and concrete finishers. Latino women are often housekeepers, electrical assemblers and sewing machine operators.

Job Categories

In contrast, high-paying jobs such as airline pilots and supervisors of all kinds are dominated by white men. White women predominate as dental hygienists, secretaries and occupational therapists. Asian-American men gravitate toward both high-paying careers such as medicine and engineering and low-paying jobs as cooks, porters and groundskeepers.

The committee charged that jobs in which minorities and women predominate have been “undervalued,” even though the services provided are often of equivalent worth to employers as many white-dominated positions are.

Under the concept of pay equity, a female-dominated job like child care worker, for example, would command a wage as high as a house painter’s.

Controversial Idea

The idea has been controversial. U.S. Civil Rights Commission Chairman Clarence M. Pendleton Jr. once called it “the looniest idea since ‘Looney Tunes’ came on the screen,” saying that the marketplace should determine salaries and questioning how jobs’ comparable worth would be decided.

In its study, the committee urged average wage increases ranging from 37.8% for jobs held disproportionately by black women to 5.5% for jobs dominated by white men. White women would gain 30.8% under the formula.

Committee officials asserted that increasing the value of a job is “good business sense” because it makes employees more productive.

People find themselves in low-paying jobs for many reasons, committee members said, including racism. Education, job training and affirmative action can help graduate people to higher-paying jobs, said the officials, but seniority and simple love of their jobs keep some workers where they are.