Women's Wages
Long before Mrs. Cavalet Keir held up the Education Bill, by securing a snap vote against the Coalition Government on the issue of equal pay for equal work by teachers, this principle was an acute embarrassment to politicians. They never found the circumstances quite right either for rejecting it or accepting it. Last week at Margate the performance was repeated, this time by Mrs. E. M. White, of Watford, who carried a resolution for equal pay for all central and local government employees with a four to one vote against the Labour Party Executive. There are various ways of getting out of this dilemma. The issue may be avoided altogether. as it usually has been in the past. There is the expedient of refer- ring the matter to a comrpittee. The Report of the Royal Commis- sion on this subject, six months ago, was a model of evasion. Or again, there is the policy of the present Government of accepting equal pay in principle and postponing it in practice. All these devices are expedients, varying mainly in the degree of cynicism with which they are adopted. Nevertheless; the Government now seems to be faced with a genuine dilemma. The principle really is one of equal pay for equal mirk. But either the women employees are doing equal work already, in which case the raising of their wages at the moment would be purely inflationary in its effect, or they are not, in which case their wages should be raised part passu with an increase in output and not automatically in advance. It is au very unfortunate for a Government which is learning—very painfully, but perceptibly—that economic policies are more difficult to apply than economic doctrines are to enunciate. And it is doubly unfor- tunate that the campaign for getting more women into industry should have been timed to begin at this very moment. But industry really does need these women, and there could have been no good reason for postponing the appeal. And the Chancellor Of the Ex- chequer, in the statement on the report of the Royal Commission on Equal Pay which he is to make next week, may be able to do some- thing to reconcile the present conflict of policies.
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