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The purpose of this article is to examine the proposal adopted by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) that employers undertaking an equal pay review should be permitted a “protected period” during which its employees would be prohibited from taking equal pay claims to law. This proposal is considered against recent collective agreements in local government and National Health Service, and where equal pay claims have been made by employees either with the support of the unions that are party to the collective agreement or more critically with external legal support.

Information is drawn from the EOC, from employer and trade union sources, and decisions of the employment tribunals and courts.

The outcome of the unstructured mix of collective bargaining and litigation shows a pattern of delay, uncertainty, added conflict between involved parties and pressure, making resource adjustments that initially were to be avoided.

The research has been undertaken as the collective agreements are being implemented. As the initial hearings of claims are not complete and there are opportunities for appeals against initial judgments, the descriptions here are unlikely to provide a settled account.

The EOC proposal is given support but shown to need further institutional support. In that regard the opportunity is taken to consider a possible alternative form of adjudication of “collective” equal pay issues. It is proposed to facilitate an extended version of a former jurisdiction of the Central Arbitration Committee.

An understanding of the relationship between male and female wages in Australia can best be understood by examining the decisions of tribunals in the industrial arena. The decisions of the tribunals have reduced the gap between male and female earnings, however, they have not yet been able to provide for pay equity. A gap still exists which cannot be explained through differences in the human capital of the male and female workforces. At one level this gap can be explained in terms of the impact of differences in the occupational and industrial distribution of the male and female workforces, their hours of work and positions in organisational hierarchies. However, this explanation is too superficial, being unable to explain why these differences in employment behaviour occur. Neither is it able to explain the ways in which women's wages are influenced by social values, tribunal doctrines and practices, the activities of trade unions and policies in the broader social and political arena.

The major provisions and some implications of the British Equal Pay Act have been noted in the previous article by Robinson and Wallace. The purposes of this comment are to examine the concept of low pay, to analyse progress towards equal pay by changes to national agreements at May 1973 and to discuss the effect of such progress upon the position of low paid men.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

Examines the debate (1891‐1923) concerning whether women should receive equal pay for equal work and whether they should have equal employment opportunities. Addresses the issues surrounding equal employment opportunities for women, whether women′s work performance was equal to that of men, the question of equal pay and, finally, the debate over equal pay vs equal job opportunity.

Legislation is being prepared in both Canada and the USA to force a new social reality on the workplace in which pay systems will be made equitable. The vehicle will be job evaluation. This article details, in practical terms, how job evaluation techniques can be used as a means of social‐reorientation towards a new era of industrial relations.

Considers why a wage gap still exists between men and women, despite the introduction in the USA of the Equal Pay Act (EPA) in 1963 and the Civil Rights Act (Title VII) in 1964. Details the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC’s) interpretations of the two Acts’ provisions relating to employment discrimination on the basis of gender, looking in particular at the EPA’s determinants of job equality. Outlines the circumstances under which wage differentials are permissible, and discusses actions that can be taken in the case of EPA violations, explaining the EEOC’s filing requirements. Reviews the equal pay legislation in California, particularly relating to comparable worth, and provides an example of a successful wage discrimination case in which the Supreme Court looked beyond the EPA and considered a wider interpretation of the Bennett Amendment of Title VII. Suggests that this case sets a precedent for addressing equal employment issues, and urges employers to examine their compensation systems to ensure that no biases exist.

Equal Pay—Objectives and Achievement Equal pay for women has a history of policy declarations dating back in Great Britain to the resolution of the Trades Union Congress in 1888: “That in the opinion of this Congress it is desirable, in the interests of both men and women, that in trades where women do the same work as men, they shall receive the same pay.” On an international level the International Labour Organisation included the concept of “equal remuneration for work of equal value” in its constitution adopted in 1919, reiterating the principle in Convention 100 in 1951, which was not however ratified by this country until 1971, one year after the passage of the Equal Pay Act. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 states that “everyone, without distinction, has the right to equal pay for equal work”, with a more precise definition in its 1967 Declation on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “that all appropriate measures shall be taken to ensure to women,… the right to equal remuneration with men and to equality of treatment in respect of work of equal value”. In contrast, under Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome member states of the European Economic Community are required to “ensure and subsequently maintain the application of the principle that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work”.

Equal pay legislation has been on the statute book since May 1970 in the form of the Equal Pay Act, due to be fully effective at the end of 1975. In an earlier article the authors discussed problems to be expected in implementing the Equal Pay Act with particular reference to retail distribution. The present article first examines progress toward equal pay on the basis of recent statistics covering basic wage rates and earnings in a wide range of industries and occupations in Britain. Secondly it considers implications of further proposals to raise the status of women through measures intended “to make it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of sex … in a wide range of activities and situations”, including employment. Finally, in the light of procedures and machinery designed for the enforcement of anti‐discrimination laws, it questions whether the two objectives of equal pay and equal opportunity for women are entirely consistent.

If equal pay for equal work were already the rule, it would be difficult to adduce reasoned arguments for paying different remuneration for people doing the same work alongside one another, once family responsibilities had been covered by social security legislation. In the Civil Service and among employers and owners of businesses and professional practices it is the rule, but for employees a different system applies. It is over eighty years since the TUC first demanded equal pay for equal work and now that the Equal Pay Act of 1970 is on the statute book, it might be thought that the battle is won. But the Act will slumber until the end of 1975 unless information reaching him can spur the Minister to invoke his powers under the Act and require earlier but partial implementation. The subject, like the poor, continues to be with us; many women will find that when the Act does become fully operative they will gain nothing, for equal pay as a concept is based on comparability within an organisation (or associated ones) and at least 700 000 are estimated to be unaffected by it. Also, one reason why other women who could do similar work to that of more highly paid male colleagues may be unable to claim equal pay is because they lack the necessary training; so they will continue to be under‐used as far as their potentialities are concerned. The poor record of training of women is a severe indictment of the multi‐million pound ITB system and of the costly (and equally paid) Department of Employment which purports to supervise it.