Reevaluating Comparable Worth: AFSCME’s Pay Equity Campaigns of Yesteryear and Today

In celebration of Equal Pay Day on April 2, 2019, podcast host and American Federation of Teachers archivist Dan Golodner recounts a time 100 years ago when male teachers tried, and failed, to prevent female teachers from bargaining for pay equity with their male peers. AFSCME archivist Stefanie Caloia discusses AFSCME’s groundbreaking equal pay campaigns for public employees in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Local 101 in San Jose, California and Council 28 in Washington state. To alleviate the large pay disparities between male and female public employees, the “comparable worth” of jobs typically held by men and jobs typically held by women were reevaluated. City managers and politicians got cheap, librarians got tricky, union members got cheeky with a barbecue grill, and eventually female AFSCME members got a raise, although not enough to completely erase pay inequity between women and men. Producer and archivist Troy Eller English threatens to celebrate Equal Pay Day by editing out just 80 percent of Dan’s cursing, but scolds him for mouth breathing, instead. More Information Pay Equity and the Public Employee Related Collections AFSCME Communications Department Records AFSCME Office of the President: Gerald W. McEntee Records AFSCME Office of the President: Jerry Wurf Records AFSCME Office of the Secretary-Treasurer: William Lucy Records AFSCME Program Development Department Records AFSCME Women’s Rights Department Records Coalition of Labor Union Women Records Susan Holleran Papers SEIU District 925 Records SEIU District 925 Legacy Project Episode Credits Producers: Dan Golodner and Troy Eller English Host: Dan Golodner Interviewees: Stefanie Caloia Sound: Troy Eller English With support from the Reuther Podcast Collective: Bart Bealmear, Elizabeth Clemens, Meghan Courtney, Troy Eller English, Dan Golodner, and Paul Neirink