THE FREE PRESS OPINION Page A8 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2000 PHONE 564-0005 "The theory of a free press is that the truth will emerge from free reporting and free discussion." Walter Lippman THE PRINCE GEORGE FREE PRESS PUBLISHER LORNE DOERKSON editor Shane Mills ADVERTISING MANAGER RICHARD SKINNER 1773 South Lyon Street, Prince George, B.C. V2N 1T3 Phone: 564-0005 Fax: 562-0025 EDITOR@F GFREEPRESS.COM ADSALES@PGFREEPRESS.COM Pay equity goes private It wasn’t the expected answer Women’s Equality Minister Joan Smallwood had just announced the creation of a Women’s Workplace Equity Office to promote equal pay for women. Won’t it take a law to force companies to act? It was a for-the-record question. Surely the government wasn’t considering new laws to drop hundreds of millions in costs and endless miles of red tape on business. “We’ve not ruled out anything at this point,” Smallwood said. “The office itself will serve us well regardless of the decision that cabinet makes at the end of the day” And Smallwood went ftirther. Even business owners who support pay equity have told her that legislation is needed before they’ll tackle the issue, she said. They have to know their competitors will face the same extra costs. Pay equity legislation is still alive, at least within cabinet. The workplace equity office will have a staff of five who will talk with business, labour and local government about changes to help women take an equal role in the workplace. Specifically, says Smallwood, it will be a clearinghouse for success stories. If a company has come up with an effective way of preventing sexual harassment on the job, the lessons can be passed on. The need for workplace equity remains. In 1997 women working full-time in B.C. earned an average $33,000, about 73 per cent of the average earnings for men. There are some legitimate reasons for the gap. Even working fulltime, women tend to work shorter hours. And they also tend to have less experience and education and work in non-unionized sectors. Those two factors can explain half the wage gap. But about one-third of the gap, according to the province, occurs because women’s work is under valued. And that’s where the notion of pay equity legislation comes in, a notion that will make business very nervous. Pay equity programs for government employees have added more than $200 million to wage costs in the last three years. Extended across the economy - or even across bigger businesses, the most likely target - they would cost far more. Based on the ministry's numbers, simply ending the undervaluing of women’s jobs would add $2.2 billion to business costs in B.C. . That’s one of the problems with the government’s approach. The starting point is that women’s jobs are under valued, without even a passing nod to the idea that perhaps some men’s jobs are over-valued. Compare clerical workers — largely female — in a car factory with male assembly line workers and the work might be ranked as similar in value, although the men are paid more. But the reason is that the assembly line work used to be much more difficult. The higher pay rates are historical and no longer justified. Raising the wages of clerks just expands the aberration. And the artificially inflated pay scale affects every other employer in the community. There are effective ways to promote pay equity. But a legislated pay equity program would be an economic disaster, a costly, cumbersome web that would entangle businesses already over burdened compared with their competitors outside the province. The Prince George Free Press is A POLITICALLY INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY AND SUNDAY. All material contained in this publication is protected by copyright. Reproduction is expressly prohibited by the rightsholder. SUDDENS UJJAL ReAUSfct) IT WAWT HIM Bluffing with the economy Economic globalization is like a poker game. Money — in high-stakes poker and in the unregulated global marketplace — means power. Those who have it are best positioned to get more of it, and to crush their competitors in the process. I had this revelation last Friday while playing a game of cards with the boys. (And no, I wasn’t drunk when I came up with the analogy. Bear with me for a while.) See, as I sat there I began to realize that the guys sitting around the table weren’t so much “Gary” and “Jay” and “Brent” as they were individual nations of the world acting out the graceless game of globalization. There was “New Zealand”, who was quickly flat broke and ready to sell off all his assets to foreign interests. Then there were the two novices. Let’s call them “Mexico” and “Argentina”. They were eventually forced to go to the Insta-Teller (let’s call that the World Bank) for more cash, but wound up losing anyway. The “Third World” lost his buy-in — twice — and then, in a desperate attempt to recoup his MCALPINE VIEW Cam McAlpine losses, accepted a big loan from “Russia.” In one fell swoop, his debt had soared to almost five times what he had originally invested. The “European Union” was riding high for a while, and he let everyone know it. Then he lost everything, and proceeded to blame everyone else for his problems. “Canada”, after quadrupling his initial investment, cashed in and walked away — not, in true Canadian fashion, without feeling sorry for all those poor countries he had helped fleece, however. What remained was a perfect symbol for the inevitable result of unimpeded economic globalization: “Russia” on one side, a poverty-stricken shell of his former superpower self, throwing around his last few chips in a desperate attempt to prove he could still compete against his former rival the “United States”; and the “U.S.” sitting there behind a big stack of chips with a dopey smile on his face, a little drunk, a little reckless, but seemingly able to pluck aces out of the air without even trying. “America” had gained the summit of the global heap. He controlled the world’s assets (or at least the kitty we had all paid into). He would be able to go out and buy a nice suit tomorrow, while the rest of us ate cat food for breakfast. In the end, however, maybe what goes around does come around. Apparently, after I went home, the "Third World”, having borrowed another wad, proceeded to bankrupt the “United States” and “Russia” and walked away with all the spoils.