eral public to be representative of legitimate work-related differences between different jobs. In point of fact, however, wage differentials are often the product of disparate societal factors, which have combined to create wage differentials which bear little relationship to the work-related differences between various jobs. These disparate societal factors range from overt discrimination based on the personal characteristics of individual job holders to supply and demand situations, and from traditional perceptions which have not been adapted to contemporary societal conditions to the relative strengths of organized employee groups.
Long ago in most industrialized societies, interest groups began to exert pressures aimed at gaining wage equity for one or more classes of employees. The earliest of these interest groups were those directed at the employment of child labor, and these groups were soon followed by those attempting to gain some equity for women workers. The most successful of these interest groups were the organized labor unions, which, effectively, began in the late nineteenth century.
In the United States in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the slogan "equal pay for equal work" became a familiar theme of interest groups seeking wage equity for female workers. In the 1950s, this slogan was also invoked in behalf of workers from ethnic and racial minorities. Finally, in the 1960s, a significant piece of national legislation was enacted into law--The Civil Rights Act of 1964.4 For the first time in American history, there appeared to be national legislation which would eliminate wage differentials which were based upon discrimination. For a while, it appeared that wage differentials based upon discrimination would, indeed, be eliminated; however, by the late-1970s, many societal groups had become convinced that not only had progress toward...