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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 2, 1962)
MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD, OREGON 0 A Your Money's Worth By SYLVIA PORTER Copyright, Hall Syndicate, Inc. mm 8fe0 if' TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2. 1962 4f l- r c .... EQUAL PAY ACT SHELVED AGAIN For the 18th consecutive year the Congress of the United States has considered and shelved legislation to require em-1 ployers to pay women the same rates as men for Identical or , comparable work. The Equal Pay Act of 1962 got further than any previous) effort "to prohibit discrimination on account of sex in the payment of wages," though. For the first time in history an equal pay bill actually was passed by one of the Houses of Congress: the date was July 25, the place, the floor of he t House of Representatives. Admittedly, the House passed the ; bill in a frivolous mood, amended it so that it would have ; permitted employers to cut the pay of men to equalize the nay of women. But at least H.R. 11877 reached a Senate sub committee before getting the usual treatment - sudden dCaSo the great United States, leading republic and demo cracy of the world, remains among liie backward nations . in its attitude toward women In the labor marketplace, not 1 even recognizing on a national level the justice of equal pay for men and women doing work of equal type and value. There are 24 million women In the U.S. work force ..j... aii wnrtmri - and before lhig decade ' IOQBV, gilO'lltitu v ends, the female work force will be at the 30 million mark. Women have penetrated just about every occupa "iional group, ranging from the most demanding icien lific work to the least demanding ervice work. The average age of women workers today is 40 against an average age of 26 in grandmother's day and more than half of all women workers are married. Women constitute one-third of all college graduates, one-third of all who hold . master's degrees as well as one-third of the labor force. Yet, only 22 of our states have laws requiring equal pay for comparable work, many of these state laws are of dubious effectiveness and Congress has once again seen to it that there is no federal equal pay law. As a result, the discrim ination on pay scales because of sex continues painfully obvious. , i One-third of 1,000 companies surveyed by the National Office Management Assn. last year frankly reported a double standard pay scale for male and female officeworkers. In one plant in Utah studied by the Young Women's Christian Assn 'he hiring rate for women inspectors is $1.38 an hour, for men, $1.48 an hour and the differential rises to 34 cents as they move up the experience ladder - even though, as Miss Ruth Thomson of the YWCA told a House subcommittee,, "they are required and expected to do exactly the same job under the same conditions. Another survey of bank tellers' salaries in I960 disclosed that women tellers with under five years of experience typ ically average $3 to $15 a week less than men in the same group - and in a bank, a teller is a teller Is a teller, regard less of sex. Among college graduates, the differences in av erage salaries for men and women, when compared by occu pation and type of degree, range from $200 to $1,5(10 a year, all in favor ot men. In fact, the gap widens as education levels rise because of the barriers to promotion of women. The evidence of discrimination i overwhelming and no 'one denies it. In her testimony before the House subcom mittee, Mrs. Gladys A. Tillett, a U.S. representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, submitted data that should make any American, man or woman, blush, for we're behind even some of the most underdeveloped lands on writing this principle Into law. Japan put the equal pay lor equal work principle into its constitution in 1046, Burma did It In lis constitution in 1947, India in 1949, Indonesia in 1950, Vietnam in 19S2, Thailand in 1956. . , ., , , The explanations for our persistent failure to recognize the validity ot this principle arc a hodge-podge ot pocket book, prejudice, tradition and fear. Many employers are openly hostile lo the action because they fear their payrolls would be hiked overnight If women's wages were Ihe same lis men's for Identical work. The prejudices and traditions need no comment; you know them. The YWCA's Miss Thomson summed it up superbly when she said to the House subcommittee: "Is this because we want to say to the world lhal we hold women's work to be loss valuable than that of men's? This Is hardly conceivable. I prefer to believe that it merely signifies that we have Just not yet caught up with ourselves." We certainly have not. Valley Artist To Attend Meeting A Rogue valley artist will be among those participating this month at Ihe 11th annual Northwest Regional confer ence, American Institute of Architects at Oceanlikc, Ore. Eugene Dennett, Medford, and Tom Hardy, Portland, will discuss their sculptures al the conference along with David John McCosh, profes sor of art, University of Ore gon, painter; and Jane Allen Cichring, assistant professor of art, University of Oregon. The artists will have some of their work on display and will offer Instructions In painting, sculpture, sand cast ing, and slitchery during aft ernoon, outdoor sessions, ' More than 300 persons are expected to attend the meet ing Oct. 10 through 13 from A1A chapters in Washington. Oregon. Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii. Thcinc tor the conference is "The Art of Doing." Key note speaker will be Philip C. Johnson. New York City, who will speak on "The Aiil of Building." 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