Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T14:06:14.008Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

IS ‘EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK’ MERELY A PRINCIPLE OF NONDISCRIMINATION?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2015

Jeffrey Moriarty
Jeffrey Moriarty*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, Bentley University, 175 Forest St., AAC 109, Waltham, MA 02452, USA. Email: [email protected]. URL: https://faculty.bentley.edu/details.asp?uname=jmoriarty
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Should people who perform equal work receive equal pay? Most would say ‘yes’, at least insofar as this question is understood to be asking whether employers should be permitted to discriminate against employees on the basis of race or sex. But suppose the employees belong to all of the same traditionally protected groups. Is (what I call) nondiscriminatory unequal pay for equal work wrong? Drawing an analogy with price discrimination, I argue that it is not intrinsically wrong, but it can be deceptive, in which case it is wrong.

Keywords

compensationdiscriminationequal pay for equal workprice discrimination
Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 435 - 461
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Altman, A. 2011. Discrimination. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), Zalta, E.N., ed. URL: <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/discrimination/>..>Google Scholar
Anderson, E. 1999. What is the point of equality? Ethics 109: 287–337.Google Scholar
Babcock, L. and Laschever, S.. 2003. Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnett, R. E. 1977. Restitution: a new paradigm of criminal justice. Ethics 87: 279–301.Google Scholar
Boatright, J. R. 2010. Executive compensation: unjust or just right? In Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics, ed. Brenkert, G. G. and Beauchamp, T. L., 161–201. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, D., Mas, A., Moretti, E. and Saez, E.. 2012. Inequality at work: the effect of peer salaries on job satisfaction. American Economic Review 102: 2981–3003.Google Scholar
Cotter, A.-M. M. 2006. Race Matters: An International Legal Analysis of Race Discrimination. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Cowherd, D. M. and Levine, D. I.. 1992. Product quality and pay equity between lower-level employees and top management: an investigation of distributive justice theory. Administrative Science Quarterly 37: 302–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danziger, L. and Katz, E.. 1997. Wage secrecy as a social convention. Economic Inquiry 35: 59–69.Google Scholar
Elegido, J. M. 2011. The ethics of price discrimination. Business Ethics Quarterly 21: 633–660.Google Scholar
Feinberg, J. 1999 [1963]. Justice and personal desert. In What Do We Deserve? A Reader on Justice and Desert, ed. Pojman, L. P. and McLeod, O., 70–83. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, R. H. 1984. Are workers paid their marginal products? American Economic Review 74: 549–571.Google Scholar
Frank, R. H. and Bernanke, B. S.. 2013. Principles of Economics, 5th edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. 2002 [1962].Capitalism and Freedom, 40th anniversary edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gardner, J. 1998. On the ground of her sex(uality). Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 18: 167–187.Google Scholar
Guthrie, J. P. 2007. Remuneration: pay effects at work. In Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management, ed. Boxall, P., Purcell, J. and Wright, P., 344–363. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hannak, A., Soeller, G., Lazer, D., Mislove, A. and Wilson, C.. 2014. Measuring price discrimination and steering on e-commerce web sites. In Proceedings of the 14th ACM/USENIX Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2014), Vancouver, 305–318. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery.Google Scholar
Heath, J. 2007. An adversarial ethic for business: or when Sun-Tzu met the stakeholder. Journal of Business Ethics 72: 359–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellman, D. 2008. When is Discrimination Wrong? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Husak, D. N. 1992. Why punish the deserving? Noûs 26: 447–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L. and Thaler, R. H.. 1986. Fairness and the assumptions of economics. Journal of Business Ethics 59: S285–S300.Google Scholar
Kalleberg, A. L. and Rognes, J.. 2000. Employment relations in Norway: some dimensions and correlates. Journal of Organizational Behavior 21: 315–335.Google Scholar
Krugman, P. 2000. Reckonings; What price fairness? New York Times, 4 October 2008. URL: <http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/04/opinion/reckonings-what-price-fairness.html>..>Google Scholar
Lazear, E. P. and Rosen, S.. 1981. Rank-order tournaments as optimum labor contracts. Journal of Political Economy 89: 841–864.Google Scholar
Lippert-Rasmussen, K. 2014. Born Free and Equal? A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Discrimination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Macneil, I. R. 1980. The New Social Contract: An Inquiry into Modern Contractual Relations. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Marcoux, A. M. 2006. Much ado about price discrimination. Journal of Private Enterprise 21: 50–67.Google Scholar
McLeod, O. 1996. Desert and wages. Utilitas 8: 205–221.Google Scholar
Mikians, J., Gyarmati, L., Erramilli, V. and Laoutaris, N.. 2012. Detecting price and search discrimination on the internet. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets-XI), Redman, WA, 79–84. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milkovich, G. T. and Newman, J. M.. 2008. Compensation, 9th edition. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.Google Scholar
Miller, D. 1999. Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Moreau, S. 2010. What is discrimination? Philosophy & Public Affairs 38: 143–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moriarty, J. 2003. Against the asymmetry of desert. Noûs 37: 518–536.Google Scholar
Mortensen, D. 2003. Wage Dispersion: Why Are Similar Workers Paid Differently? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M. C. 2000. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 1999. A Theory of Justice, Revised edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univeristy Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, D. C. 2002. Marginal productivity and analysis in teams. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 48: 355–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousseau, D. M. 1995. Psychological Contracts in Organizations: Understanding Written and Unwritten Agreements. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 2008. Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmalensee, R. 1981. Output and welfare implications of monopolistic third-degree price discrimination. American Economic Review 71: 242–247.Google Scholar
Snyder, J. 2009. What's the matter with price gouging? Business Ethics Quarterly 19: 275–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sternberg, E. 2000. Just Business: Business Ethics in Action, 2nd edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stigler, G. J. 1966. The Theory of Price, 3rd edition. New York, NY: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Strudler, A. 2010. The distinctive wrong in lying. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13: 171–179.Google Scholar
Turow, J. 2005. Have they got a deal for you. Washington Post, 19 June 2005. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/18/AR2005061800070.html.Google Scholar
Turow, J., Feldman, L. and Meltzer, K.. 2005. Open to exploitation: America's shoppers online and offline. Departmental Paper, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania. URL: <http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/35>..' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Turow,+J.,+Feldman,+L.+and+Meltzer,+K..+2005.+Open+to+exploitation:+America's+shoppers+online+and+offline.+Departmental+Paper,+Annenberg+Public+Policy+Center,+University+of+Pennsylvania.+URL:+.>Google Scholar
Valentino-Devries, J., Singer-Vine, J. and Soltani, A.. 2012. Websites vary prices, deals based on users' information. The Wall Street Journal, 24 December 2012. URL: <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323777204578189391813881534>..' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Valentino-Devries,+J.,+Singer-Vine,+J.+and+Soltani,+A..+2012.+Websites+vary+prices,+deals+based+on+users'+information.+The+Wall+Street+Journal,+24+December+2012.+URL:+.>Google Scholar
Varian, H. R. 1985. Price discrimination and social welfare. American Economic Review 75: 870–875.Google Scholar
Von Hirsch, A. 1992. Proportionality in the philosophy of punishment. Ethics 16: 55–98.Google Scholar
Walzer, M. 1983. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Wasserman, N. 2006. Stewards, agents, and the founder discount: executive compensation in new ventures. Academy of Management Journal 49: 960–976.Google Scholar
Wasserstrom, R. 1976–1977. Racism, sexism, and preferential treatment: an approach to the topics. UCLA Law Review 24: 581–622.Google Scholar
Wertheimer, A. 1996. Exploitation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
White, S. G. 2003. The Civic Minimum. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, A. 2014. Coercion, manipulation, exploitation. In Manipulation: Theory and Practice, ed. Coons, C. L. and Weber, M., 17–50. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zwolinski, M. 2008. The ethics of price gouging. Business Ethics Quarterly 18: 347–378.Google Scholar