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From: chabot@amber.DEC (All God's chillun got guns)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: A new form of institutionalized bigotry
Message-ID: <3420@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Aug-85 21:14:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.3420
Posted: Fri Aug  2 21:14:33 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Aug-85 06:21:14 EDT
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> I am convinced that women in most female-dominated occupations are underpaid,
> but the arguments of most "comparable value" advocates disturb me deeply.
> They seem to want to install a new form of official bigotry: an anti-blue
> collar, anti-organized labor, anti-working class bigotry that is far too
> impressed with credentials.

> As the best example, let's consider the messages about garbage collectors.
> While garbage collection does not require special credentials, it requires
> a willingness to take on an extremely undesirable job with large health risks.

Another job that isn't all that desirable (although it is indoors) and has
large health risks: lab tech at a hospital.  Fun, fun, sifting through other
people's blood and bodily fluids and solids.  I know someone who got hepatitis
because she accidentally got contaminated.  Sometimes even more virulent
diseases are in the specimens.  And a patient with undetected tuberculosis
who'd been in the icu for months, and everybody got tested and a couple of
hospital employees got cases which tested active in the first screening.
In the lab you don't get much human contact with the patients, unless you draw
blood, and then the patient isn't looking forward to that! although the 
patients on the wards will often prefer the lab tech, who does many in a day
and so has a lot of practice, to a doctor who may only have one or two
patients whose blood needs checking today and feels she/he wants to draw it.
Those tubes your blood goes into when they draw it are usually glass; sometimes
accidents happen I've seen them fall and break and then there's a mess--broken
glass to break the skin and blood to harbor interesting things.  No, lab techs
don't get paid that great, either.
 
> Other people have suggested that the people who should get less in the
> glorious EPFWOEV society should be blue-collar, organized labor workers.
> Nice, huh? Presently, although an executive secretary often gets paid 
> less than a construction laborer, she considers herself to be in the
> same class as the executives she associates with, and far above the lowly
> common laborer. Rather than addressing class inequality, many "comparable
> worth" advocates would institutionalize it, by paying more for clean,
> professional, female-dominated occupations, and less for dirty, undesirable,
> male-dominated occupations. We would obtain a two-tiered society; the
> professionals and the serfs. No minimum-wage construction worker would
> then dare to wolf whistle at his "betters".

I'm not convinced by this argument that paying secretaries a salary comparable
with the worth of the job they do means that secretaries will thus be placed
in the oppressive class.  Who's to say that they then will make more than
the garbage collector or those construction workers who make minimum wage?
It could just be higher for the secretaries than they have now.

If the secretaries did earn more, then this means they're in a higher class?
Does this then mean that the situation we have today, with many garbage 
collectors being paid more than many secretaries, and therefore the garbage
collectors are in a higher class than the women?  And the higher class is
entitled to engage in various forms of insult to the lower class such as
whistling and other threatening things?

> Marx would be thrilled to study this new form of class
> warfare we are about to embark on. The hypocrisy level will be amazing.
> Every class for itself; the truth be damned.

Re: truth--see paragraph above about whistling. 

> So what do I propose to improve the lot of working women? They should proceed
> in the same way the blue-collar men did it -- organize and strike. They
> are in a far better position to do it successfully than the workers around
> the turn of the century were; then there were no assistance programs, no
> two-earner families. A striking worker risked starvation or jail, but
> they did it. Why can't secretaries shut down companies and nurses shut
> down hospitals until their demands are met?

I've seen hospital "sick-outs": nurses calling in sick.  But usually only to the
point where elective surgery gets cancelled or doesn't get scheduled.

Most of the places I've lived have had a large pool of secretaries looking for
positions.  If you don't like the wages, hey, you can stay at home, they'll
just replace you.  I also know a large number of women in secretarial 
positions who are the sole support of the family.  And when you're the only 
wage-earner, it takes some strong inspiration to get you to risk your kids, 
so I admire those who've done it.

But the biggest problem is that many of the women in these positions have not
had the up-bringing or positive reinforcement or whatever that tells them that
fighting is okay; in fact most have had a lot of negative reinforcement about
being outspoken or aggressive.  I admit that there was something like this 
that hampered those strikers in early union days--you were always deferential
to your "superiors".
 
What I'd rather see is the sex-bias for jobs broken down--it should be just as
reasonable to see male secretaries and female construction workers and so on.
It's hard to say whether this would be encouraged by more reasonable pay for
female-heavy jobs or if it would rather encourage more even pay distribution.
I'm willing to try to up the secretarial jobs money to more fairly reflect their
value to the company, and see if we can't lure men into the positions as
careers.

L S Chabot   ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot   chabot%amber.dec@decwrl.arpa