In the United States, at least for now, federal equal pay law is essentially based on the principle of equal pay for equal work. Although pay equity advocates have attempted for many years to convince policymakers that pay equity laws should be based on the notion of “comparable worth” – equal pay for jobs that are not the same but comparable in value – that theory has yet to catch on here.
At the same time, the comparable worth theory has been embraced in some jurisdictions outside the U.S., including Canada and the European Union, but its implementation has not always gone smoothly. While a recent ruling by the United Kingdom’s (U.K.) Supreme Court interpreting the U.K.’s Equality Act allows plaintiffs to make those comparisons with employees working at a different establishment, it also illustrates some of the challenges in attempting to apply pay equity laws to jobs that are claimed to be comparable but are substantially different from each other.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.