Pay Equity: What is the Best Union Strategy?

Abstract

four women were elected to the top offices of the Oregon Public Employees Union, OPEU/SEIU 503. The new Vice-President, Ann Montague, jubilantly exclaimed, &dquo;This is a concrete result of our pay equity struggle over ten years ago.&dquo; In the 1980s the union waged a seven-year battle to upgrade the wages of workers in predominately female jobs and in the process created a new cadre of activists and future leaders.The Oregon pay equity struggle was one of dozens of such campaigns in the 1980s, mostly in the public sector, which attempted to upgrade wage for undervalued female-dominated jobs, and the experience illustrates the achievements and disappointments of these campaigns. Most of the campaigns resulted in pay increases for women, but the upgrades often fell short of original expectations and sometimes had a small impact on the gender wage gap. Each campaign was waged independently, and it was difficult to translate gains from one jurisdiction to another. The reforms occasionally bogged down in technical classification and job evaluation issues or stalled because of recalcitrant management or internal union divisions. Unions had