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Wage-setting under Fordism: The rise of job evaluation and the ideology of equal pay

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  • Deborah Figart

Abstract

The use of job evaluation techniques during the Fordist period has been relatively neglected by political economists. Widely adopted in the 1940s by the large manufacturing firms that constituted the dynamic sector of industry, job evaluation helped to restructure relations between management and labor. As mass production replaced craft production, employers sought to pay their workers on the basis of 'deskilled' job content. Job evaluation was also a not-so-subtle repudiation of bargaining power, determining 'the rate for the job' on the basis of internal hierarchies and market wage surveys rather than collective negotiations. However, the practice of job evaluation also rested on a theory of wage determination that set wages according to the principle of equal pay for equal work. That is, wages were based on the attributes of the job rather than the individual incumbent. The process of reconciling equal pay as ideology with preexisting gender wage disparities resulted in a narrow definition of equal work.

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  • Deborah Figart, 2001. "Wage-setting under Fordism: The rise of job evaluation and the ideology of equal pay," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 405-425.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:13:y:2001:i:4:p:405-425
    DOI: 10.1080/0953825012009935
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    Cited by:

    1. Arnaldo Camuffo, 2002. "The Changing Nature of Internal Labor Markets," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 6(4), pages 281-294, December.

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