Page 47 - Business Principles and Management

Unit 1

reside in households where one or more parents do not have the education and
skills to hold high-paying jobs. Many parents cannot participate fully in the labor
force because they don’t have access to good-quality, affordable child care. The
strongest influence on increased income is increased education.
The government has several programs to reduce poverty. Minimum wage rates,
unemployment benefits, financial or food aid, and subsidized medical care provide
a basic safety net for the economically disadvantaged. Businesses increasingly offer
training programs to provide skills that enable people to find and hold jobs.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
Equality for all is one of the basic principles on which the United States was
founded. Yet, some groups of Americans have found it difficult to obtain jobs
or be promoted on an equal basis. Several laws have been passed to outlaw
discrimination on the basis of race, gender, national origin, color, religion, age,
handicap, and other characteristics.
In many occupations, the numbers of women and racial minorities are few.
Even when they find jobs, people in these groups may encounter difficulties in
being promoted above a certain level. This has come to be known as the glass
ceiling—an invisible barrier to job advancement. The barriers are often difficult
to detect. For example, if employees expressed discomfort with having a female
or African-American supervisor, this may make promotion of women and
African-Americans less likely. Employers are now legally obligated to provide
equal employment opportunities for all.
Many women and members of racial minority groups are employed in entry-
level positions with little hope for career advancement. These are low-paying
jobs requiring little skill and education, such as restaurant server, sales clerk,
or nurse’s aide. The inability of these workers to move up from these jobs is
referred to as the sticky floor syndrome. Higher education and redesigning the
jobs offer the best opportunities for workers to escape from this predicament.

COMPARABLE WORTH
Studies show that men tend to earn more than women do. It is not clear if this
difference is due to discrimination against women or to the nature of the jobs
women do. There are a few professions in which women predominate. Wages
tend to be lower in jobs that employ lots of women than in jobs held primarily
by men. For instance, most dental hygienists are women, whereas most airline
pilots are men. Pilots tend to earn more money than dental hygienists.
But what happens when the jobs are not the same but require similar
levels of training and responsibility? Comparable worth means paying work-
ers equally for jobs with similar but not identical job requirements. The con-
cept is also called “equal pay for comparable work.” Jobs compared may be
distinctly different, such as legal secretary and carpenter. However, if it can
be determined that the two jobs require about the same level of training and
responsibility, the pay scale for the two jobs should be the same. That is, legal
secretaries should be paid more than what they currently earn to bring their
pay up to that of carpenters. To determine whether work is of equal value,
analysts compare factors such as special skills, physical strength, job dangers,
responsibility, and education.
However, it is not easy to determine the specific factors that measure the worth
of jobs. Should physical strength, for instance, be used to compare the worth of a
legal secretary to a carpenter? And if few applicants are available for the carpen-
ter’s position and many are available for legal secretaries, is it fair to pay legal

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