I just found this alarming article

[ShadowHM]

Exactly.  It's when the Govt. steps in and sets the pay rate of housekeepers at $10 that we start smelling communism.  If the housekeeper wanted more money for performing the same activity, then they should go work as a Janitor, which the market has determined is adding more value.
The housekeeper is only a housekeeper if they choose to be.
The housekeeper is 'only' earning $8/hour if they accept that rate.

P.S. just to check I'm not arguing crossed lines again, I take Janitor as a cleaner in a business or school, and a housekeeper as someone that comes in to private homes to be a cleaner?
[right][snapback]66932[/snapback][/right]

My bad, whybish.

I should have been more explicit in how I worded that last post.
The point I was making was that there were many cases where the definition of janitor was a man who did cleaning and a housekeeper was a woman who did cleaning. So, for example, there were hotel chains who had both on the payroll, and the housekeeper really didn't hava a choice about becoming a janitor and getting the extra pay. Hence, the concept of 'equal pay for work of equal value' does have merit when applied to a single employer.

It gets much more complex than that when the employer has many locations. For example, no matter what the job description, it may well be necessary for that employer to pay more to keep employees in some areas - like extremely remote areas or extremely high cost of living areas. However, this is usually handled by calling the differences in pay 'location bonuses'. It still allows for some form of discrimination in hiring practices, should the company want to do that.

Lastly, the notion of 'equal pay for work of equal value', at least as applied here, does not involve the government mandating any specific remuneration level, beyond the minimum wage. It just means that whatever the pay scale is at that place of work for a task, it must be applied to all who undertake it or similar ones. And it is not applied to higher income people either, as a rule, who are generally paid more by their perceived value to the company and usually are not doing 'standard and/or prescribed tasks' like a housekeeper/janitor (in my example) would be doing.

I hope that helped.