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

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.

Full text

Review of Political Economy, Volume 13, No. 4, 2001
Wage-setting under Fordism: the rise
of job evaluation and the ideology of
equal pay
DEBORAH M. FIGART
Richard Stockton College, PO Box 195, Pomona, NJ 08240–0195, USA
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 manufactur -
ing  rms 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 pre-
existing gender wage disparities resulted in a narrow de nition of equal work.
1. Introduction
Job evaluation systems were integral to the process of determining compensation
in a preponderance of large, industrial enterprises during the postwar period. Job
evaluation is a formal procedure that hierarchically orders a set of jobs in terms
of their content. The greater value or ‘worth’ of a job within an organization, as
determined by a job evaluation system, the higher the wage. The key attribute
of job evaluation is paying ‘the rate for the job’ rather than for the person in the
job.
The widespread adoption of job evaluation techniques during the Fordist
period has been relatively neglected by neoclassica l economists and even most
political economists. However, investigatin g the practice of job evaluation
reveals the historically embedded nature of wage determination. Wages should
properly be viewed as more than a socially determined level of subsistence (as
in classical political economy) or a price established in external labor markets
(as in contemporary neoclassical labor economics). Wages are derived from a
complex interaction of market forces, government regulation, and social and
cultural assumptions. Wages, therefore, are also a social practice, that is, a habit
A version of this paper was presented at the Review of Political Economy Conference in Cambridge,
UK, in July 2000. The author would like to thank Randy Albelda, two referees, and participants in
the conference for comments and suggestions.
ISSN 0953-8259 print/ISSN 1465-3982 online/01/040405-21 Ó2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/095382501200993 5

406 Deborah M. Figart
or custom that can either reproduce or alter social relations and institutionalize d
norms.1In particular, as the case of job evaluation reveals, wages re ect and
in uence gender and class relations.
If wages are a social practice, then the process of wage determination is
best understood in historical and institutional context. Fordism is one such
context. Job evaluation was essential to many of the economic and social
processes identi ed within the literature on Fordism. The very name ‘Fordism’
is symbolically derived from a series of employment policies attributed to Henry
Ford, the US auto manufacturer—most speci cally his supposed policy of
paying workers a ‘ ve dollar day.’
In macroeconomic studies of Fordism, the ‘ ve-dollar day’ concept has
come to represent the ‘virtuous circle’ whereby high-wage workers were able to
sustain high levels of consumption and thereby aggregate demand. More
speci cally, as productivity rises, wages are depicted as rising in concert in order
to maintain adequate consumption levels. This, in turn, maintaine d pro tability
(see Jessop, 1991; Clarke, 1992; Appelbaum, 1995). Therefore, wage-setting is
critical in the link between consumption and the process of accumulation under
Fordism. Although collective bargaining over wages, especially wage increases,
is generally viewed as the primary mechanism for accomplishing the ‘virtuous
circle’ between productivity and consumption, job evaluation circumscribed the
domain of wage negotiations.
Another reason to focus on wage determination under Fordism is that it is
absolutely integral to issues of labor control and labor market segmentation.
While the macroeconomic view of Fordism as characterized by a virtuous circle
portrays wage determination as relatively uncontentious, inside  rms the labor
process is frequently depicted as a realm of con ict (see, for example, Gordon
et al., 1982; Fairris 1994). Within these microeconomic analyses of Fordism, the
segmentation of labor is noted as a key aspect of labor control. Yet the
institutionalizatio n of wage relativities as part of the segmentatio n process,
accomplished through job classi cation systems, has received less attention.
Investigating job evaluation, therefore, improves our understanding of the actual
process and practice of wage determination within the  rm during this period.
The following section summarizes the growth of industry under Fordism, in
both the US and Europe. The third section traces the practice of job evaluation
while the fourth section examines its adoption by modern industry. Although
both the US and Europe are discussed throughout the paper, many job evaluation
practices originated in the US and so this experience is treated in more detail.
This is followed by two sections that develop the implications of this wage-set-
ting practice for the bargaining power of organized labor and for working
women who were left out of the capital-labor accord. In fact, attention to job
evaluation reveals more capital-labor discord than accord. In particular, job
evaluation undermined organized labor’s voice in wage determination. However,
there were rather different implications for working women, whose position in
the labor market made job evaluation more promising. Job evaluation opened the
1The three dimensions of wages–wages as a living, a price, and a social practice–are elaborated in
Figart et al. (forthcoming).

Wage-setting under Fordism 407
door to equal pay by gender although, in practice, equal pay was ultimately
severely compromised.
2. Business under Fordism
The term Fordism has a long history and has been used by different schools of
political economy. It is employed by the regulation school founded by Michel
Aglietta (1979) to refer to a regime that was consolidated during the post-World
War II period, from the 1940s through the 1960s. It is analogous to the concept
of a postwar Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) developed by David
Gordon and his co-authors in the United States (for a review, see, for example
Kotz et al., 1994; O’Hara, 1994; Boushey & Pressman, 1997). The use of
Fordism in this paper is not wedded to either of these perspectives, but is meant
broadly to capture a political economy perspective on the characteristics of the
postwar period.
Although there are differences between them, both schools have elements
in common. Both critique neoclassical equilibrium theory for its ahistorical
mode of analysis and also for its neglect of the social context in which economic
activity occurs (Down, 1993). Both approaches are constructed upon Marxist
foundations, although SSA also integrates radical institutionalism. Both regu-
lation and SSA theories focus on economic periodization and transformation
within capitalism. Although at a fairly abstract level capitalist accumulation
retains basic characteristics over time, the institutional context in which this is
accomplished can vary.
These two analyses within political economy focus on the institutional and
technical conditions underpinning, and eventually undermining, long waves of
accumulation. The Fordist, or postwar, SSA typically has two components. One
is an economic regime characterize d by mass production for mass consumption,
or a capital-labor accord.2Second is a political regime or mode of regulation that
is founded on the Keynesian welfare state, or a capital(ist)-citizen accord. SSA
theory also examines US hegemony in internationa l relations and the market
power of large, oligopolisti c corporations .
Fordism, as an analytical concept, re ects magnate Henry Ford’s role in the
rise of the automobile industry and the associated transformation of the US
economy in the early decades of the 20th century as the US evolved from an
agricultural to an industrial economy. The hallmark of mass production was the
assembly line, Taylorism, and the widespread use of ‘deskilled’ labor, as well as
the ‘ ve dollar day.’ These were introduced at the Ford Motor Company
between 1913 and 1914 (Meyer, 1981; Dassbach, 1991).3In the interwar years,
2In later writings, Gordon began to use the label ‘limited capital-labor accord,’ acknowledging that
several groups of marginalized workers were left out of the economic and social pact between big
labor and big business (see Gordon, 1994).
3Ford’s ‘ ve dollar day’ was actually quite different than the wage policies that we consider
characteristic of Fordism. His original, short-lived scheme involved a base wage rate supplemented
by a pro t-sharing dividend. To be eligible, workers had to participate in his social engineering
program, attending church, learning English, and embracing ‘American values’ (Clarke, 1992; see
also Meyer, 1981).

408 Deborah M. Figart
the 1920s and 1930s, General Motors enhance d Fordism through innovations in
marketing and organization (Thompson, 1999). Fordist management techniques
were also advanced in Europe, Japan, and throughout the industrialized capitalist
world.4Although automation through mass production was the most important
technical feature of Fordism, one of its equally important features was labor
control.
The early manifestations of Fordism go back to the 1920s, although the
regime consolidated during the postwar period. A period of rapid accumulation
and consolidation of industry beginnin g in the 1910s and 1920s led to increased
concentration of industry through cartels and mergers. Key industries included
railroads, oil, steel, chemical, electrical and tobacco industries, not only in the
US, but in Great Britain, Germany and France (Rider, 1995, ch. 18). Industrial
development following World War II was propelled by multinational enterprises
in both the US and Europe. Unlike the earlier big businesses and trusts that
involved the transport and delivery of raw materials, many of these companies
sold  nished goods. Continuing to mature were powerful industrie s such as
motor vehicles, electronics, steel, chemicals, aircraft, and oil re ning, with
consumer products added to the postwar list. Industrial giants included, for
example, General Motors, Exxon, General Electric, Gulf, US Steel, Du Pont, W.
R. Grace and R. J. Reynolds (Bryant & Dethloff, 1983, ch. 10; Rider, 1995, ch.
22). Mergers increased corporate size and power throughout the 1960s (DuBoff,
1989).
Aglietta (1979) argues that in the Fordist regime of intensive accumulation,
mass consumption was as critical as mass production (see also Pietrykowski,
1994). By the late 1920s, the market for consumer durables was saturated. Only
a small sector of the economy could afford these goods. With the advent of the
New Deal and expansion of collective bargaining, the potential market was
enlarged and accumulation accelerated, SSA theorists concur. Such accumula-
tion and consolidation are only possible when broader social and political
institution s support these economic processes. During the postwar period, these
institution s included a labor force that business could control, an expansionary
macro economy that sustained demand, and a stable international business
environment (Boushey & Pressman, 1997, p. 230).
3. Job Evaluation and the ‘Science’ of Wage-Setting
Modern job evaluation develope d in the United States during the 1920s and
1930s, although precursors can be found earlier (see Figart, 2000, pp. 3–4). Four
major job evaluation methods were in existence by the end of 1926: (1) ranking;
(2) grade description; (3) factor comparison; and (4) point factor. The  rst two,
ranking and grade description, are simpler, overtly subjective methods. Ranking
and grade description employ ‘whole job analysis.’ Decision makers considered
their impressions of overall job content in hierarchically ranking or grading jobs.
In an effort to reduce the subjectivity inherent in determining such rankings,
4For an overview of Fordism outside of the US, see, for example, Jessop (1991), Naruse (1991), and
Arestis & Paliginis (1995).

Wage-setting under Fordism 409
there was a shift towards more ‘rational’ and ‘scienti c’ methods of rating,
including factor comparison and point factor systems. In essence, job evaluation
applied the principle s of scienti c management to wage-setting. Key individuals
in the development of job evaluation techniques were management specialists
and industrial engineers. The point factor job evaluation plan and the factor
comparison method, a modi cation of the point factor plan, were developed and
introduced by Merrill R. Lott and Eugene J. Benge respectively (Benge et al.,
1941, pp. 13–15; Beatty & Beatty, 1984, p. 67). As Frederick Taylor promoted
the reorganization of production techniques, these advocates promoted the
scienti c organization of compensation systems.
The a priori point factor method became the most common method of job
evaluation. Edward N. Hay developed the most widely used ‘canned’ a priori
system, the Hay Guide Chart-Pro le Method and marketed it through the
consulting  rm that, to this day, bears his name.5Here is how a point factor job
evaluation system works. First, an organization selects job attributes that it
believes are valuable. These are referred to as compensable factors. The most
common categories of compensable factors are skill (including years of edu -
cation and training requirements as proxies for skill); effort (primarily physical);
responsibility for machinery, money or people; and working conditions (what we
might call compensatin g differentials) . The earliest plans only included the  rst
three, skill, effort and responsibility . Remuneration for dif cult or hazardous
working conditions was integrated later, largely at the behest of labor unions and
industrial relations specialists. The relative weight of each compensable factor is
determined in advance (or a priori) by determining a range of points that can be
accumulated for each. Usually skill is weighted the highest.
The second step is to rate jobs and/or job classes. Job descriptions, detailed
questionnaires, and/or interviews with employees or their supervisors are used to
rate jobs on each compensable factor. Total point scores are tallied for each job
or job class. The third step assigns a wage rate. A salary scale is used to relate
a speci ed point score (or range of points) to a speci c wage level. The greater
the points, the higher the wage. Usually these salary scales come from wage
surveys for key (or benchmark) jobs. As a hypothetical example, if a machinist
is rated at 4600 points in a  rm’s job evaluation system, and a salary survey
indicates that machinists earn a wage of $20 per hour in local markets, then the
machinist and other jobs with similar point scores will be paid a comparable
wage. Benchmark jobs are supposed to be those with clear comparators in
external labor markets. Therefore, market wages have some in uence on the
outcome of job evaluation systems.
Even though job evaluation explicitly focused on establishing internal wage
relativities, it was also viewed as a strategy for maintaining lower absolute wage
levels. Advocates speci cally portrayed job evaluation as either a preferable
alternative to collective bargaining or a means of limiting negotiated wage
increases. For example, Benge, Hay, and another co-author emphasized that job
evaluation provides a ‘defensible’ basis for setting relative wages (Benge et al.,
5According to Ora zem et al. (1992) the Hay s ystem has been adopted by ove r 5000 employers around
the world.

410 Deborah M. Figart
1941). Wage rates set by collective bargaining were depicted as ‘unstable and
subject to  uctuation, depending upon economic and labor conditions at the time
when labor contracts are up for renewal,’ according to their 1941 manual (Benge
et al., 1941, p. 19). Comparing collective bargaining to wage determination by
 at or individua l negotiations, they labeled all of these alternatives to job
evaluation ‘unsystematic ’ (Benge et al., 1941, p. 18). Hay (1940, p. 22) noted
that job evaluation ‘permits of considerable control over salary costs’.
This entailed a conscious rejection of labor’s efforts to base wages on living
standards. Supporters of job evaluation viewed labor’s effort to link wages to the
cost of living as a fruitless quest that would be undermined by in ation.
Speci cally, Benge et al. (1941, pp. 16–17) asserted that ‘Wage scales which are
geared to the cost of living, and move up or down in accordance with some
accepted cost of living index, … start an upward or downward spiral in the cost
of living itself’. Further, these industrial engineers expressed concern that
competition between employers in tight labor markets (‘piracies of employees by
employers’) put upward pressure on wages. Job evaluation was also supposed to
reduce pay disparities across department s and divisions of the company and
lessen employee grievances and spiraling wage costs due to competition between
groups of employees or even individual employees within the organization . Job
evaluation could thus ‘stabilize labor rates for the community’ (Benge et al.,
1941, p. 179).
Ironically, the claims of job evaluation’s objectivity were either ignored or
contested by most academic economists. For neoclassical wage theorists, any
wage-setting practices that deviated from market rates would be corrected by
market forces; therefore, the institutions used for setting wages could con-
veniently be ignored . Economist Frank Pierson, writing in 1957, observed that
labor economists lagged in their incorporation of job evaluation techniques into
wage theory (Pierson, 1957). A search for articles by subject in the Index of
Economic Journals from the 1920s through the 1960s, a reference publication
listing journal articles in 90 economics and industrial relations journals (similar
to today’s Journa l of Economic Literature), revealed a general neglect of the
topic of job evaluation. Only two articles from economics journals were indexed,
published in Industrial and Labor Relations Review and Industrial Relations
rather than journals with a broader focus. This contrasts markedly with manage-
ment journals such as the Harvard Business Review, which regularly discussed
new techniques in personnel administration , job analysis and classi cation, and
wage policies. Over a dozen articles on job evaluation appeared in business
journals during the same period.
A few labor economics texts in the early postwar period did tackle the
issue of job evaluation. These economists generally defended market forces,
even though they were more open to the role of institutional and administrative
factors in labor markets. Most challenged claims of the objectivity of job
evaluation. For example, in an early labor economics textbook originally
published in 1951, Lloyd Reynolds (1971, p. 263) argued that ‘it is not possible
to “measure” the relative worth of different jobs with the precision and
impersonality of a thermometer. The ranking of jobs continues to rest on a
multitude of qualitative judgments’. Although not rejecting job evaluation

Wage-setting under Fordism 411
outright, Reynolds had reservations. Similarly, Harvard professor Robert Liver-
nash wrote that ‘job evaluation is not a rigid, objective, analytical procedure.’
However, he adds that ‘Neither is it a meaningless process of rationalization ’
(Livernash, 1957, p. 163). In The Economics of Labor, E. H. Phelps Brown
(1962, p. 129) asserted: ‘… job evaluation … may rest upon the direct observa -
tion of different jobs; but this observation cannot provide objective measure-
ment—only subjective assessments that are private to each observer, even
though at any one time consensus prevails’. On a related note, he is also
suspicious of wage regulation because it is at variance with ‘the facts of the
market’ (Phelps Brown, 1962, p. 206).
Despite acknowledging the importance of decision-makin g within  rms,
institutiona l economists were also wary of job evaluation. For example, Kerr &
Fisher (1950, p. 88) argued that job evaluation was ‘compounded of many
nonobjective elements’. Kerr & Fisher were particularly concerned about the
under-compensation of job hazards and physical exertion, what economists now
call compensating differentials. They were also suspicious of its use by manage -
ment to reduce the bargaining power of unions. According to Kerr & Fisher,
internal wage structures neglect ‘external considerations ’ (Kerr & Fisher, 1950,
p. 77).6These external considerations include market wages, which they defend
in the following manner: ‘The fact remains that the failure of a [job evaluation]
plan to account for recognized wage levels is an open invitation for employee
dissatisfaction and labor union strife to arise’ (Kerr & Fisher, 1950, p. 78).
Looking through the lens of skilled labor, the traditional constituency of labor
unions, they saw market rates as determined, in part, by the bargaining power of
scarce labor.
4. Job Evaluation in the Industrial Economy
The adoption of job evaluation by employers was contingent upon economic
trends and institutiona l arrangements during the relatively short time period
around World War II. As a result of new production methods introduced at the
end of the 1930s and during the war, the number of varied yet relatively
unskilled occupations had increased sharply. With the shift from craft work to
mass production came a de-emphasis on individual ability: ‘… while skilled
craftsmen may be said to be paid in accordance with what they were able to do,
semi-skilled and unskilled workers tend to be paid according to what they are
actually doing’ (ILO, 1960, p. 7). In the words of an industrial engineer at US
Steel, the goal was to ‘dissociate the individual from the job’ (King, 1938,
p. 98). According to Dassbach, this also led to the equalization of wage rates:
‘Because the inherent tendency of Fordism is to reduce labor in production to the
lowest common denominator—simple abstract labor—it is no longer necessary
to compensate this labor at different rates’ (Dassbach, 1991, p. 88).
Large  rms were also replacing the paternalistic business leaders of an
6Economists will recognize Clark Kerr as a contributor to the development of internal labor market
theory. Kerr’s (1954) approach to wage determination acknowledged the role of institutional
structures and decision-making within the  rm.

412 Deborah M. Figart
earlier era with a professional managerial class; the transition to paying the rate
for the job coincided with this bureaucratization process (Edwards, 1979). These
new managers in fast-growing industries argued that job evaluation was the best
method of aligning rates of pay in industrial jobs, as the traditional craft wage
structure based upon master, journeyman, apprentice, and helper was no longer
applicable.7In its place were new hierarchies based upon ‘internal labor
markets’. Institutional economists developed the concept of an internal labor
market to describe the distribution of positions within large  rms during the
middle of the 20th century. In a  rm with an internal labor market, employees
are hired into positions that are considered ports of entry. Upward mobility is
then governed by a set of administrative rules and procedures. Pay on the basis
of job content, not personal attributes, complemented this system of labor
relations.
As they adopted job evaluation techniques, employers echoed the manage -
ment specialists who developed them. Job evaluation was both ‘rational’ and a
means of reducing wage costs. Groups such as the American Management
Association professed that job evaluation was a device to ‘maintain management
control of the wage structure under collective bargaining’ (Slichter et al., 1960,
p. 561). The largest and predominant business lobby, the National Association of
Manufacturers advocated job evaluation as ‘but one of a series of man-job
controls’ (NAM, 1957, p. 3). The National Industrial Conference Board (1940,
p. 3) in the US added that, at the bargaining table, job evaluation helps vindicate
existing pay rates: ‘A sound system of compensation is particularly helpful at
times of negotiation for higher rates of pay’. Job evaluation was used to hold the
line on wage increases when this was in management’s interest, or even to deter
union organization from the outset (see, for example, Slichter et al., 1960, ch.
19).
The popularity of job evaluation swelled under Fordism. In the late 1930s,
job evaluation technique s were adopted in two of the leading industries represen-
tative of the sectoral changes in the economy, the metal fabricating and electrical
equipment industries . The National Metal Trades Association and National
Electrical Manufacturers Association developed industry-wide point factor
evaluation plans and encouraged their members to adopt them (for a description
of these and other plans, see Walters, 1938).8Table 1 lists some of the major US
companies that adopted job evaluation prior to 1940. Steel rolling mills, other
metal trades, and electrical applianc e manufacturers are well represented, re-
sponding to the support of the trade associations. Three major retailers, Marshall
Field, Montgomery Ward, and Sears, Roebuck had implemented job evaluation.
Eight of the  rms in Table 1 were among the 30 listed companies comprising
the Dow Jones Industrial Average at that time—an indicator that they were
considered dominant market leaders.
7In fact, however, the clear line between mass production and traditional craft jobs had become
blurred.
8NMTA estimated that there were 500 users of their plan by 1950; NEMA estimated that 1200 to
1500 plants employed their plan (Patton & Smith, 1950, p. 68). Other trade associations developed
similar plans but they were not extensively adopted by individual employers (Benge et al. 1941,
p. 178).

Wage-setting under Fordism 413
Table 1. Some major US companies adopting job evaluation by 1940
For manufacturing and wage-earning jobs:
American Optical Company –Metals Division International Harvester*
American Rolling Mill Company Kimberly-Clark Corporation
American Telephone & Telegraph* Leeds and Northrup Company
Atlantic Re ning Company Marshall Field & Company
Carnegie-Illinois Steel Montgomery Ward
Cheney Brothers Company Revere Cooper and Brass Incorporated
Cincinnati Milling Machine Company Sears, Roebuck and Company*
Firestone Tire & Rubber Socony-Vacuum Oil Company
Frigidaire Corporation Standard Oil of Ohio
General Electric Company* US Steel*
General Foods Corporation* Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing*
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company* Wright Aeronautical Corporation
Hammermill Paper
Some plans also applied to salaried jobs:
Atlantic Re ning Company
General Electric Company*
General Foods Corporation*
The Pennsylvania Company
Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company*
*indicates the company was included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as of March 14, 1939; the DJIA
did not change again until July 3, 1956.
Sources: Riegel (1937), Walters (1938), National Industrial Conference Board (1940)

414 Deborah M. Figart
During World War II, the state, in the form of the National War Labor
Board in the US, played a signi cant role in promoting and even requiring job
evaluation in industry. Given tight labor markets but equally tight government
limits on wage increases, employers and unions joined together in looking for
loopholes that could justify wage increases. If an employer could document
internal pay inequities between job classes, the War Labor Board would approve
wage increases. In this unique situation, job evaluation became a means of
raising wages (Figart, 2000, pp. 8–10).
After the war ended, the use of job evaluation skyrocketed. In 1940, about
13% of US  rms in industry used job evaluation, according to a survey of
personnel practices by the National Industrial Conference Board; by 1948,
another Conference Board survey found that the percentage had increased to
59%. However,  rms were more likely to use job evaluation for hourly-paid and
salaried employees than for supervisor y or executive positions (Quaid, 1993,
p. 30). According to one survey of 73 companies, job evaluation was extensive
in the metal trades in the 1940s and 1950s (Baker & True, 1947). Companies
such as Lockheed, Northrup, and other aircraft and airframe manufacturers, used
industry-wide plans. Another estimate indicates that about two-thirds of the labor
force was covered (Livy, 1975, p. 136). A nationa l ‘Personnel Policies Forum’
survey of 132 personnel and industrial relations executives by the Bureau of
National Affairs (BNA) in 1956 con rmed: ‘Some kind of job evaluation plan
is in use in six out of seven of the larger companies and three fourths of the
smaller  rms’ (BNA, 1956, p. 1). Job evaluation became nearly universal in
large  rms and was quickly reaching medium and small  rms as well.
Relative to the United States, European industry was slower to implement
job evaluation. Nevertheless, job evaluation did grow in popularity among
European  rms during the Fordist era,  rst among selected industries and then
on a broader scale. In Britain, for instance, usage was widespread in electrical
engineering and chemicals industries by 1960 (ILO, 1960). A major chemical
manufacturer, Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd, introduced job evaluation in
1935 as part of the ‘Bedeaux system’ of work measurement that, in the classical
tradition of American scienti c management, also incorporate d time study and
standardized costing (Gill et al., 1977, p. 52). A National Board for Prices and
Incomes survey of industrial establishments in 1967 found that job evaluation
was employed in a small percentage of  rms, but covered almost a quarter of
employees. Other British surveys have shown that as much as 30% of  rms used
job evaluation, and there was considerable adoption in both the industrial and
service sectors from 1967 to 1980 (Ghobadian & White, 1986, pp. 9, 18).
In the Dutch steel industry, employers and unions pioneered job evaluation
toward the end of 1946. Other industries followed suit and management
consulting  rms packaged their own job evaluation systems. In 1947, experts of
the leading management consulting  rms, the confederation of employers, and
the socialist trade union confederation met to design a single job evaluation
system. A  rst draft was completed a year later. By the 1960s, a single
(‘normalized’ or ‘standardized’) job evaluation system encompassed all branches
of manufacturing, and efforts, although unsuccessful, were made to extend the
system to the whole economy (ILO, 1960; Oettinger, 1964).

Wage-setting under Fordism 415
Point factor job evaluation was also widely adopted in the steel industries
of West Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands—
the founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, the
predecessor to the European Economic Community in 1957. The Swedish metal
trades and engineering  rms also adopted job evaluation . Companies with
prominent job evaluation plans highlighted by the Internationa l Labour Of ce
included Volkswagen in West Germany and Te´le´ me´canique e´lectrique in France
(ILO, 1960, Appendix C).
From this history, it is clear that job evaluation was an integral part of the
transformation of the militant industrial unionism of the 1930s , with its demon-
strations of bargaining strength through sit-down strikes. Instead, we were
evolving toward an era of business unionism, formality and rationality. Widely
adopted in the 1940s by the large manufacturin g  rms that constituted the
dynamic sector of industry, job evaluation helped to restructure relations be -
tween 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 sold as ‘science’ in order to give it legitimacy. However, job
evaluation was also a not-so-subtle repudiation of collective bargaining, and
therefore the idea that wages would be based upon bargaining power. Instead,
‘the rate for the job’ was to be determined on the basis of internal hierarchies
and external market wage surveys.
5. Capital–Labor (Dis)cord: resistance to job evaluation
Organized labor was highly skeptical about job evaluation. From the traditional
class perspective of unionized male workers, job evaluation practices represented
a threat, a managerial strategy to control wage-setting practices and limit wage
increases. While there was no singular voice of opposition in the US from the
AFL, CIO or later the AFL-CIO, there certainly were objections raised by many
individual unions. Because job evaluation disassociates the skills of the individ-
ual from the value of the job, craft unions were much more opposed than
industrial unions. European trade unions, especially those in Britain, were just as
cautious about job evaluation as their American counterparts.
As was noted earlier, some unions embraced job evaluation during World
War II as one of the few tools at their disposal for getting wage increases for
their members. After the war, however, the controversy resurfaced. A fundamen -
tal critique, and the major fear, was that job evaluation would replace collective
bargaining as a tool for wage determination . In their manual, What’s Wrong with
Job Evaluation, the International Association of Machinists (IAM) presented job
evaluation as a direct threat to the union and its members. In its view, job
evaluation pitted workers against one another, jockeying for better ratings within
the system. This undermined their uni ed voice in opposition to management.9
Further, labor felt that management took advantage of workers’ lack of
understanding of all the techniques involved in point factor job evaluation. For
9The IAM’s other concerns ranged from wage freezes and wage ceilings to skill dilution and
downgrading.

416 Deborah M. Figart
example, metal workers called job evaluation so complex as to be largely
incomprehensible (see ILO, 1960, pp. 103–108; Livy, 1975, p. 140). The process
placed wage issues in the hands of so-called management experts. Evaluation
plans were often drawn up and ‘presented to the unions.’ A nationwide survey
by the Bureau of National Affairs revealed that, among companies that had
unions at the time job evaluation was introduced, about one-half developed plans
without active union participation (Bureau of National Affairs, 1956, pp. 8–9).
Union leaders challenge d the claim that job evaluation was objective and
scienti c. William Gomberg, Director of the Management Engineering Depart-
ment of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, AFL, decried ‘the
all-too-popular misconception that job evaluation is a sort of “magic formula”,
which operates something like a slide-rule and eliminates the need for human
judgment’ (Gomberg, 1947, p. 11). Solomon Barkin, Director of Research for
the Textile Workers Union of America, CIO, asserted that job evaluation is more
‘trick’ than ‘technique.’ He added: ‘It is not impartial since it results from a
speci c wage philosoph y of paying going wages,’ by which he meant wages
would be capped at current rates (quoted in Gomberg, 1947, p. 65, emphasis
added). Due, in part, to union criticism, in 1950 one job evaluation textbook
called the practice one of the most controversial questions in current wage
administration (Patton & Smith, 1950, pp. 8–9).
Eventually, as with so many other examples, union resistance was gradually
worn down. Organized labor cautiously and gradually accepted job evaluation
and began to seek a greater voice in the process. Some unions began to seek
ways of integrating job evaluation with collective bargaining. According to the
British Trade Union Congress in 1967:
The technique of job evaluation can serve trade union objectives, as well as
those of management but job evaluation is a technique that depends on
subjective judgment and has its limitations. … It can supplement collective
bargaining but it can not be an alternative … . (quoted in Ghobadian & White,
1986, p. 78)
The more unions were involved in the implementation process, the greater the
level of approval (Ghobadian & White, 1986). Basically, a bargain was struck
between labor and management. Unions accepted job evaluation as a means of
establishing internal wage relativities, so long as this was overlaid by collective
bargaining over wage increases.10
Seen in this light, job evaluation represents another dimension of the power
that labor eventually acquiesced to management during the Fordist period. It is
analogous to the relinquishing of the right to bargain over the technical relations
of production, codi ed in the proliferation of ‘management rights’ clauses in the
US (Gordon et al., 1982; Gordon, 1994). These contract provisions further
separated the planning of the work from the factory  oor, so that workers were
no longer involved in the design of the production process (Taplin, 1995,
10 A survey of British trade unions indicates that 41% believe that the formal grading and salary
structure associated with job evaluation made collective bargaining easier, although manual
employees’ repre sentatives expressed less approval t han the representa tives of non-manual e mployees
(Ghobadian & White, 1986, Table 8.6).

Wage-setting under Fordism 417
p. 414). In return, workers received job security and a share of the dividend that
resulted from increased productivity. Job evaluation facilitated this trade-off.
Three of the four compensable factors that form the core of job evaluation
practice—skill, effort, and responsibility—ar e productivity-relate d variables.
Workers were given a stake in increased productivit y because the value of their
jobs was linked to these factors. Through job evaluation, management had a new
technique for worker control.
Labor relations during this period were more complex than depicted by the
phrase capital–labor accord. It is both a period of accord and discord. As Fairris
(1997) points out in his study of shop oor relations, workers were disempowered
at the workplace, even though their economic status was improved through an
increasing social wage. Augmenting the macroeconomic analysis of Fordism
with attention to the microeconomic processes of wage determination provides
a richer analysis of the postwar economic regime.
6. Equal Pay for Equal Work as Ideology and Practice
Ironically, what was so resisted by organized labor was potentially better for
gender equity. Recall that job evaluation paid the rate for the job, not for the
person holding the job. In early job evaluation textbooks, a frequently cited
principle was ‘equal pay for equal work’. For example, a 1946 guide entitled Job
Evaluation Methods asserted that:
Job evaluation deals with jobs impersonally and is not concerned with the race,
creed, color, age, or sex of the employee unless in some way these personal
variations become pertinent to the jobs. Equal pay for equal work is the very
essence of job evaluation. (Lytle, 1946, p. 287)
Another text written the same year noted:
The purpose of job evaluation is to  nd out exactly what each job is and to
measure its true value in relation to all other jobs in the company. When this
measure has been determined, the pay rates for all jobs can be established on
the basis on equal pay for equal work … . (Johnson et al., 1946, p. 1)
This means that job evaluation was designed to eliminate management practices
that evaluated a worker’s family circumstances, work history, and other personal
considerations in determining wages.11
However, the principle of equal pay for equal work con icted with
generalized social norms. In the early part of the 20th century, a two-tiered wage
structure for men and women was not only taken for granted culturally, it was
a perfectly legal workplace practice. Employers did not pay men and women
equally for equal work. Unequal wages derived from the assumption that men
were breadwinners who deserved a family wage and that most women were
secondary earners, primarily supported by husbands , fathers, or brothers. There
11 Alice Kessler-Harris describes job applications and employer interviews that queried applicants in
the 1910s about their living circumstances, family situation, and estimated expenses in order to
provide an appropriate wage (Kessler-Harris, 1990, p. 18). Bruce Pietrykowski (1995) notes how the
Ford Motor Company segmented single women from married women whose husbands were unable
to support their families, paying different wages based on need.

418 Deborah M. Figart
were two forms of pay inequity: (1) men’s jobs were paid more than women’s
jobs and (2) those few women in the same jobs as men earned less than their
male co-workers.
Two studies of US compensation systems conducted by the Research
Director at the Bureau of Industrial Relations at the University of Michigan in
the 1930s found employers enthusiastically advocated both pay practices. For
example, in these studies, the author, John Riegel, found that ‘Most of the
companies visited have separate salary scales for men and women. The salary
scale for men is priced with reference to prevailing rates in the community for
men’s positions, and the women’s salary scale is priced with reference to
prevailing rates in the community for women’s positions’ (Riegel, 1940, pp. 42–
43).
Of course, in the 1930s, it was still relatively uncommon to  nd men and
women in the same jobs. At the University of Michigan conference, the gathered
employers indicated that ‘most occupations in their companies were  lled
respectively by men or by women throughout . The conference favored the
segregation of men’s jobs and women’s jobs for valuation purposes’ (Riegel,
1937, p. 21). For example, the gender composition of the job—‘sex of the
operators’—was a key variable used when gathering information in the salary
surveys that were used to determine pay rates for benchmark jobs. If an
employer was surveying the prevailing wage for, let us say, assemblers of
electric appliances that were mostly female, they would only be compared with
the wages of other female assemblers. The sex of the job incumbent was as
important as job content in de ning comparators. Salary surveys treated men and
women as existing in separate labor markets: men’s wages re ected market rates
for men and women’s wages re ected market rates for women.12 The ideology
of equal pay for equal work, although advanced by job evaluation experts in
order to stabilize class relations, destabilized this pre-existing logic of gender
wage differentials. Because job evaluation as an administrativ e practice focused
on the content of the job rather than the characteristics of the individual worker,
it was potentially disruptive of gendered wage-setting policies. In fact, by
isolating compensable factors and focusing on comparing the value of jobs
within an organization , job evaluation made comparisons of work by men and
women possible. Thus, job evaluation had the potential to ensure equal pay not
only where men and women worked side by side, but also to break the link
between a job’s rate of pay and the predominant gender of its incumbents.
This positive potential of job evaluation was noted at the time. According
to a 1950 article by institutionalis t economists Clark Kerr and Lloyd Fisher,
while organized labor could rely upon bargaining strength to lift market wages,
‘weaker groups are better served by an evaluation plan than by the market; the
former places the emphasis not on force but on equity’ (Kerr & Fisher, 1950,
p. 93). They listed among the weaker groups janitors, nurses, and typists—jobs
that were typically held by women or by men of color. Whereas job evaluation
was inimical to skilled craft workers, for workers in undervalued, female-
12 Employers collected separate salary data by gender until the early 1960s. For a treatment of bias
in contemporary salary surveys, see Kim (2000).

Wage-setting under Fordism 419
dominated and minority-concentrate d jobs, the process of internal job rating held
promise.
Advocates for working women sought to carry the message of paying
according to job content in order to effect equal pay by gender. Since its
inception in 1920, the Women’s Bureau of the US Department of Labor fought
for equal wage rates for women and men. Openly supporting job evaluation, the
Women’s Bureau asserted: ‘A correct or suitable rate for a job can be establishe d
only by an analysis of the speci c requirements of the job’ (US Department of
Labor, Women’s Bureau, 1942, p. 22). At a 1952 conference on equal pay
hosted by the Women’s Bureau and attended by over 100 representatives of
women’s organizations , trade unions, employer associations, civic groups, and
personnel of cials from state government , Arthur S. Flemming, one of the  rst
administrators of the federal classi cation system, asserted:
Growing out of my own experiences in the Federal Government, I know that
there is not a chance in the world of the concept of equal pay for equal work
really being put into effect unless there is in effect a good, sound, practical
system of analyzing and classifying jobs on the basis of duties and responsibil -
ities. (US Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 1952, pp. 13–14)
Unions were more ambivalent. Again, World War II was a turning point. As
women entered war industries while men went to battle, unions, especially those
with primarily male membership, feared permanent substitution of lower-paid
women into formerly male jobs. The United Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers of America (UE) argued in 1943 that companies often broke down
men’s jobs, such as a machine operator, into simpli ed parts, then reclassi ed
the new jobs into lower-paid women’s jobs: ‘Often the company gives as the
reason the fact that heavy lifting was required on the original job, but not on the
new one. Nevertheless, when it breaks down the job into its component parts and
has a laborer do the lifting, it pays him a lower rate also’ (United Electrical,
Radio and Machine Workers of America, 1943, p. 94). The concern was not
entirely unfounded. A leading study of  rm compensation practices noted that
‘When a company  nds that a particular position can be  lled by women as well
as by men, there is a tendency to substitute women for men and apply the
[cheaper] rates in the women’s scale’ (Riegel, 1940, p. 43).
In this context, the principle of equal pay for equal work by gender gathered
support from some US unions partly in order to protect the wage levels in men’s
jobs.13 If women earned the same wages as men, it was felt, employers would
be less likely to hire them. Although women’s job opportunities would be
decreased, the wages of male breadwinners would be protected. However,
unions were still divided about how to achieve equal pay for equal work. In the
US, the AFL in particular favored reliance upon collective bargaining clauses.
In contrast, employers and wage administrators were resistant to eliminating
13 The argument that some unions supported equal pay based on the interests of their male members
has been advanced by Ruth Milkman (1987) and Alice Kessler -Harris (1990). However, Milkman
also notes that female-dominated unions such as the United Electrical Workers strongly advocated
a broad comparable worth policy on behalf of working women. More recently, Dorothy Sue Cobble
(1994) has reasserted the role of trade union women in espousing equal pay.

420 Deborah M. Figart
gender-based wage differentials. They argued that raising women’s wages would
make them uncompetitive . Since common practice in job evaluation did not
lower any workers’ wage to correct imbalances, equal pay could only be
achieved by raising women’s wages (Baker & True, 1947, p. 62). Employers
who paid women the prevailing ‘woman’s wage’ would have a cost advantage
over employers who paid men and women equally.
As the rhetoric of paying the job rather than the worker became manage-
ment policy, something had to change. To reconcile prevailing gender wage
hierarchies with the principle of paying the job and not the person, job
evaluation itself was used to rationalize pay inequities. The major job evaluation
systems developed by management consulting  rms during the postwar period
reproduced gendered pay practices in new ways. Speci cally, job evaluation
systems were designed and administered in ways that institutionalize d unequal
pay between predominantly men’s jobs and female-dominated occupations.
The manipulation of job evaluation could be quite blatant. For example, one
company’s job evaluation administrator s explicitly recommended: (1) excluding
female occupations from the job evaluation plan, (2) excessively weighting
‘male characteristics’ such as ‘strenuousness ’, and (3) using different wage
scales for converting points to pay in men’s and women’s jobs (Baker & True,
1947, p. 62). In a review of research on job evaluation , British researchers at the
Policy Studies Institute report that: “‘juggling” the results of an exercise to
produce a result which does not disturb established differentials between groups
of employees is a practice which is countenanced and even on occasions
promoted by managers and trade unions’ (Ghobadian & White, 1986, p. 9). In
sum, ‘[M]ost job evaluation schemes in the UK have been designed, not to
implement equal pay for work of equal value, but to reproduce the status quo
and thus unequal pay’ (Hastings, 1999, p. 59).14 In fact, the forms of gender bias
that were incorporated into the major job evaluation systems develope d in North
America and Europe have been extensively documented by feminist researchers
(see, for example, Remick, 1984; Steinberg, 1990; Fudge & McDermott, 1991;
Rubery, 1998; Quinn, 1999; Figart, 2000).
The most explicit examples of unequal pay—separate pay scales for men
and women in the same job—were phased out. Nevertheless, a broader interpret -
ation of the concept of equal pay—that is, equal pay for work of equal value or
comparable worth (across men’s and women’s occupations )—was less success-
ful. As a pamphlet from the UE argued, ‘The guarantee of equal pay for equal
work does nothing to raise the rates of women employed on jobs that were
traditionally women’s jobs’ (UE, 1943, p. 91).
This narrow de nition of equal work, speci ed as virtually identical rather
than comparable jobs, was incorporated into the US Equal Pay Act, passed in
1963, as well as job evaluation systems. Early versions of the bill, introduced
beginning in 1946, had called for equal pay ‘for work of comparable quality or
quantity’. To enable passage, the legislation ultimately settled for equal pay ‘for
equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and
14 One study from the university sector in Sweden shows that full implementation of job evaluation
would raise women’s relative wages only 2–6% (Lo¨fstro¨ m, 1999).

Wage-setting under Fordism 421
responsibility , and which are performed under similar working conditions’. This
compromised language utilized job evaluation’s four compensable factors, indi-
cating that this employer practice helped construct legislators’ understanding of
what constituted fair pay.15 At the time the Equal Pay Act was passed, the
Bureau of National Affairs noted that employers opposed regulating equal pay,
not the ideology: ‘There is virtually no opposition to the principle of equal pay
for equal work … . Opposition to the present law and its predecessors generally
has been centered on something other than equal pay’ (Bureau of National
Affairs, 1963, p. 7).16 For example, employers raised the twin specters of
government bureaucracy and unemployment.
As the Fordist period gave way to a period of restructuring in the 1970s and
1980s, a new set of economic and social conditions provided the impetus for a
revival of the movement to raise wages for women’s jobs. The ‘comparable
worth’ or ‘pay equity’ movement that develope d in the mid-to-late 1970s
fashioned a strategic shift, in terms of both location and technique. Most pay
equity activity during this period occurred in the female-intensive public sector,
in state and local governments . Job classi cation systems in the public sector
were explicit and public, facilitating a critical assessment of wage practices.
Comparable worth job evaluation—job evaluation to uncover discrepancies in
pay between men’s and women’s jobs—became one of the cornerstones of the
new pay equity movement. Feminists and other advocates for working women
attempted to wrest control of job evaluation from employers and managers.
Reformed (gender-neutral) job evaluation systems could ensure that female-
dominated jobs would be paid the same as male-dominated jobs within the same
organization when they were of equivalent value to the employer. Using job
evaluation systems to rank jobs according to their value or worth, pay equity or
comparable worth studies tested whether similarly ranked male and female job
classes received comparable pay. Pay equity wage adjustments were given to
workers in underpaid job classes to close identi ed gaps.17 This technique
underlay the slogan ‘equal pay for work of comparable value.’
The successes and failures of this comparable worth movement have been
extensively analyzed by feminist scholars. Many case studies of comparable
worth implementation have concluded that the reliance upon job evaluation
techniques had disadvantage s as well as advantages (Evans & Nelson, 1989;
Acker, 1989; Fudge & McDermott, 1991; Figart & Kahn, 1997). The process of
constructing a pay equity study and negotiating the size of a fund for comparable
worth wage adjustments are ripe with decisions that affect the ultimate size of
wage increases. Most of these decisions are delegated to consultants or retained
by managers. The outcomes were severely compromised .
15 In contrast, the European Court of Justice has upheld that equal pay for equal value is mandated
under the European Union’s Equal Pay Directive of 1975. For further discussion of equal value in
Europe, see Rubery (1998) and Hastings (1999).
16 Although management groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the US
Chamber of Commerce testi ed in opposition to the bill, they did so on the grounds of opposing
bureaucracy and encroaching federal power.
17 Note that all incumbents in an undervalued job receive the adjustments, even if some men work
in a predominantly female job.

422 Deborah M. Figart
This story of job evaluation and equal pay has several implications for our
understanding of Fordism. On the one hand, job evaluation required the system-
atic consideration of the compensable factors found in both men’s and women’s
jobs. This had the potential to attenuate gender-based wage differentials. On the
other hand, manipulation of wage scales crept into a supposedly objective
wage-setting process through job analysis and through the linking of evaluated
points or rankings to pay. In reinforcing the wage hierarchy between men’s and
women’s occupations, job evaluation systems were integral to the segmentation
of labor markets discusse d by Gordon, Edwards & Reich (1982). The structure
of the labor market segments has been shown to be more complicated than the
schema identi ed by these authors (see Rubery, 1978; Albelda & Tilly, 1994).
Job evaluation adds to this critique. Blue collar manufacturing jobs in core  rms
are identi ed in the literature as the subordinat e primary sector; yet women in
clerical and other female-dominated jobs within manufacturing are even further
subordinated. Job evaluation is the mechanism though which job hierarchies as
well as the underpaymen t of women was validated. Including job evaluation in
an analysis of wage-setting under Fordism helps to clarify further the ‘limited’
nature of the capital–labor accord.18 The ‘ ve dollar day’ was not intended for
working women.
7. Conclusions
Job evaluation was used to deter industrial union organizing and hold the line on
wage increases following unionization. Yet class and gender interests partly
collided, as job evaluation had another side: it had the potential to play a
signi cant role in the implementatio n of equal pay for work. The concept of
equal pay for equal work began to be institutionalize d as a leading component
of management’s wage-setting philosophy. However, equal pay was imple -
mented less completely as practice. Job evaluation techniques, although a
signi cant step toward unbiased compensation systems, were largely reconciled
with the pre-existing practice of lower pay for women’s jobs.
Wage-setting practices were a fundamental aspect of labor relations during
the Fordist period, in uencing the balance of power between labor and manage -
ment, income distribution and thus effective demand, and gender relations. In
focusing their analytical gaze primarily on the labor process and organizatio n of
production, political economists have overcorrected for the neglect of these
issues by neoclassica l economists . To re-establish a balance, this study identi es
job evaluation as a critical feature of wage determination under Fordism. Job
evaluation was both a wage-setting technique and an ideology about the proper
basis for establishing pay relativities. It was itself a social practice as well as a
means of institutionalizin g other social practices—including particular sets of
class and gender relations.
18 Further, the Fordist welfare state itself has been shown to be gendered (Bakshi et al., 1995).

Wage-setting under Fordism 423
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