Some time ago, before I came to know Minesota as my home, the State Legislature adopted the Minesota Pay Equity Act. The Pay Equity Act attempts to adjust the wages of local government employees around the state pursuant to the principles of the theory of “comparable worth”. For more information on comparable worth, see the Employment Policy Foundation or the League of MN Cities.
If you’re interested in seeing a detailed explanation of the Act and how to comply with it, check out the Dept of Employee Relations.
Minnesota cities must comply with the Pay Equity Act. To comply with the act, we must test our wage structure to statistically determine if our wage structure is male-biased, or OK. A wage structure can be biased in favor of males int he work force if jobs that are male dominated are paid more to female dominated jobs that are of “comparable value”.
So how does one go about determining what “comparable value” means? Cities retain consultants to test their jobs. We are employing such a consultant right now. Fox Lawson & Associates are evaluating our city jobs and assigning point values to all our jobs. The point values are then compared to each other to determine comparability. Jobs receive points for exposure to danger, working outside, supervising other employees, approving budgets, etc. There are many, many criteria that are evaluated to determine job points.
We are in compliance with the Pay Equity Act now, and I’m sure we will comply with the Act in the future, but it will take a lot of time (and money) to prove it. I’ll share more thoughts on this later.
