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Show "Pay equity" a growing movement The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, part of the Labor Department's Employment Standards ADministratjon which Elisburg heads, is responsible for the enforcement en-forcement of equal employment em-ployment opportunity and affirmative action among federal contractors and subcontractors. Elisburg reported that since 1978, OFCCP has grown to a full-fledged enforcement en-forcement program, with which many employers and unions are now cooperating. He added that the "secret of good legislation and federal programs lies in the nation becoming convinced ' of their Tightness Perhaps the biggest labor issue of the 1980s will involve measuring the worth of traditional male and female jobs, Assistant Secretary of Labor Donald Elisburg told an affirmative action seminar in Salt Lake City.' In a speech at the University of, Utah's Institute In-stitute for Human Resource Management, Elisburg discussed the new concept of ' "pay equity", a growing movement to show that "jobs different in content may be equal in their worth." Elisburg said that "when we talk about equal pay for work of comparable value, primarily we are talking , about the jobs traditionally slated for women being paid low salaries, while jobs traditionally slated for men are paid the high salaries." He noted that the book of Leviticus in the Bible "tells us that women are worth only 60 percent of the value ascribed to the male, 40 shekels versus 60 shekels." He said a Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that median earnings in 1939 for full time, year-round female workers in the labor force were 58 percent of the median for men. He added that this rose only to 60.8 percent in 1960, but dropped to 59.4 percent in 1978. "In the last 40 years then," he said, " as since Biblical , times, there has been no progress. Elisburg mentioned three reasons why women's salaries have lagged behind men's: interrupting careers to have children, completing college or post-graduate education in fewer numbers, and ''flat-out discrimination." The issue of pay equity between men and women could possibly be addressed under existing antidiscrimination anti-discrimination laws, Elisburg said, but how that authority is exercised "is another question. We don't have all the answers yet." He acknowledged that social legislation "comes haard and slowly," but may eventually occur |