Three—
"Tough Politics":
The Comparable Worth Movement in San Jose

The city of San Jose and the county of Contra Costa, although both in the greater San Francisco Bay region, are quite different in character. San Jose, located approximately fifty miles south of San Francisco, is the center of an affluent metropolitan area, with a strong ethnic and racial mix and a liberal political milieu. Thirty years ago San Jose was an important agricultural center, but it is now the capital of the high-tech industries of the Silicon Valley. Contra Costa County, in contrast, sprawls over a large area from the northeastern edge of San Francisco Bay out to the eastern valleys; there, large stretches of undeveloped hillsides remain alongside shining new housing, shopping and office developments in the central county, the poor black ghetto of the west county, and the oil refineries in the north.

I chose these cases because the differences in local character shape distinct class and gender relations. Nevertheless, both localities were the site of strong affirmative action efforts in the early 1970s and intense comparable worth campaigns a decade later. I will show in the next two chapters the distinct paths to mobilization followed by low-paid women in each locality as they moved from the limits of affirmative action to the more radical comparable worth demand. Although a similar convergence of class and gender identification resulted in the two cases, in San Jose activists began from a stronger gender-based vocabulary, and in Contra Costa a class-based discourse defined the opening moves.

In 1981 the San Jose case became one of the first major victories for the comparable worth movement. The city had undertaken a job evaluation study and verified the same sizable wage disparities indicated in the earlier Washington State study, and in July of that year the San Jose activists in AFSCME Local 101 became the first to call a strike over pay equity. Because this brief strike was a success, winning substantial wage adjustments for low-paid women and attracting extensive national attention, the San Jose case is often treated as exemplary. In this chapter I examine the origins and conduct of the San Jose effort by means of in-depth interviews with participants, documentary evidence, and secondary sources; in Chapter 4, then, I turn to the Contra Costa case. (See Appendix B for details of the research methodology and specific case references.)

From Affirmative Action to Comparable Worth

Although San Jose was the fourth largest city in the state and seventeenth largest in the country in the 1980s, it employed only some nine hundred women and three thousand men. The women worked primarily in the female-dominated occupations: over half (54 percent) worked in clerical jobs, and semiprofessionals (library and recreation workers) made up just under 20 percent of female employees.^[1] The larger number of men employed is due to the fact that San Jose, like most cities, provides police and fire services, which are predominantly male jobs.

The city of San Jose first began writing and implementing formal affirmative action plans in 1973, largely in response to the demands of the local Hispanic community. Since then a degree of racial and ethnic integration has been achieved,^[2] although only at the lowest levels (see, e.g., Acuna 1978; San Jose Mercury News 12/22/76, 1/21/74).

[1] This figure for semiprofessionals is my estimate, as extrapolated from affirmative action reports and comparable worth memos, since EEO categories are too broad to give a precise figure for this occupational grouping. Despite the lack of exact figures, clearly a large majority of female city employees work in female-dominated jobs.

[2] For example, full-time minority employment increased from approximately 10 percent of the work force in 1973 (San Jose Mercury News 2/13/76) to 30 percent in 1984 (City of San Jose 1984, 44).

The appearance of a strong feminist voice in local government was prompted by the growth of feminist activity in the community (Flammang 1985, 1986, 1987). In 1974, for example, a banner year for local feminists, the San Jose chapter of NOW hosted the organization's statewide convention (San Jose Mercury News 10/27/74) and filed a sex discrimination suit against Philco-Ford, a large aerospace firm (San Jose Mercury News 9/26/74).

One of the top priorities for feminists in San Jose was the election of women to local public office. Local chapters of the National Women's Political Caucus and the League of Women Voters worked hard toward this goal, and were quite successful—more so than groups in many other localities around the country. In 1974, in addition to a woman being elected to represent San Jose in the state assembly, former councilmember Janet Gray Hayes was voted in as mayor—the first woman in the nation to head a city of that size. Hayes and other women leaders thus proclaimed San Jose "the feminist capital of the nation" (Flammang 1985). By the time of the comparable worth strike in 1981, women held a majority of seats on the city council, Mayor Hayes had been reelected, the deputy city manager was a woman, and the city's slogan had been inflated from "the feminist capital of the nation" to "the feminist capital of the world."

The city's internal employment policies were clearly responsive to these changes. Community women's groups worked hard for affirmative action in city employment, as I learned in an interview with a former president of the local NOW chapter, who also served as the women's representative to the City's Affirmative Action Advisory Committee during this period.^[3] The city's response to these concerns was apparent in the creation of a full-time women's coordinator position. While the city affirmative action officer was responsible for implementation in general, the women's coordinator worked on affirmative action issues for the city's female employees specifically.^[4]

[3] At the time of our interview, this woman was employed as a top city personnel relations official.

[4] In fact, the city's commitment to affirmative action for women may have sparked some resentment in the minority community. In 1976 the San Jose Mercury News (2/3/76) reported that one Hispanic leader spoke out because he felt the city was favoring white women to the exclusion of minorities in meeting its affirmative action goals and timetables. By the time of my research in 1984, however, the position of women's coordinator had been eliminated.

The city's commitment to affirmative action is further evident in the changing distribution of women in the city work force. Women began for the first time to enter management positions, as well as some traditionally male blue-collar and technical bastions such as public works and the police department—if to a very modest degree. This gradual integration has continued, despite little overall growth in the size of city employment (Pifarre 1985).^[5] However, as in other organizations, the gradual move toward less strict occupational segregation by sex—a significant accomplishment in itself—materially benefited only a small number of women. At the same time, though, it sent a strong symbolic message to all female employees, enhancing women's aspirations for upward mobility. In fact, one city official concluded: "While becoming the high-tech capital of the world, San Jose was also gaining its reputation as a feminist power center. . . . Women's strong advocacy of affirmative action programs in the early 70's had led to significant employment gains. . . . But as workplace parity was gradually realized in many areas, other issues began to arise" (Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983, 359).

Clerical Women

By the mid-1970s many women were becoming frustrated with the city's affirmative action policies as, acting on newly raised expectations, they sought individual promotions. This was especially true for clerical workers, who generally lacked the college credits required for upward movement out of secretarial work. In fact, frustration with this educational requirement led to the formation of a clericals' group called the City Women for Advancement. One of my respondents recounted the group's history, explaining that city management never made exceptions, even for women with many years of experience but lacking college courses: "It was very obvious to some of us, the clerical people who were working next to

[5] Some figures can give an idea of this gradual movement. By 1978 women held 12.4 percent of technical jobs (Acuna 1978), and by 1984, this had increased to slightly over 20 percent (Pifarre 1984). Furthermore, by 1980 twenty-four women had become police officers, (5.6 percent of the total police force) and by 1984, thirty-nine (6.8 percent). Also, by 1981 there were thirty-two women in management positions (13.2 percent of total managers), and in 1985, sixty-seven (15.7 percent) (Pifarre 1985).

professional people, that there was no reason we couldn't handle those jobs just as well." When a new entry-level professional position, administrative aide, was created in 1973, the experienced clerical women, thwarted in their attempts at upward mobility, felt provoked to take action: "We applied for the jobs, about twenty, maybe thirty clericals, we all applied for the job. . . . We actually had several informal meetings and we decided to apply for the job. And we were all turned down! They disqualified us from taking the exam!"

Together, the women appealed this decision to the Civil Service Commission, turning for support to feminist organizations: "I drafted a letter to various women's groups in the area, NOW, and the Santa Clara County Commission on the Status of Women, and some others . . . and asked that they send letters of support. We outlined that [together] we had over three hundred years of clerical experience, and that we felt this was sufficient qualifications for the position—and that we should at least be allowed to test!" It was in these letters that they first called the group City Women for Advancement. "And so several groups did respond. And the Civil Service Commission ultimately did decide that in certain clerical classifications experience could be equated for the education. Mine was not one of them, however!" The irony of this outcome was not lost on the women employees: "There were about ten or twelve that were able to take the test. And the overall pass rate on that test was about 30 percent but 80 percent of clericals passed—even if only one gained the promotion."

Several important lessons came from this experience. First, the women, each interested in an individual promotion, found that they confronted a common problem of blocked mobility. Second, the women's use of a gender-based frame for their complaint was affirmed as a positive approach, both by the support gained from community feminist groups and by the partial capitulation of the Civil Service Board. But importantly, despite a fairly effective protest, the gain was so limited that women felt a need to press for further changes.

The City Women began holding lunchtime meetings about once a month, and eventually made several presentations to the city council that linked their complaints to the city's affirmative action program. The desired reforms seemed to fall well within the scope of existing policies, as actions that ought to follow from promises of "aggressive efforts" to assist women's advancement in the city sys-

tem.^[6] The biggest issues continued to be the substitution of experience for educational requirements, the creation of bridge classifications linking clerical to professional career tracks, and the creation of expanded job ladders within the clerical field itself. These demands represented elaborations or extensions of the affirmative action model, since advancement was defined as the movement of women into different jobs, at higher levels within the organization (even if this required expanding the job hierarchy). And many of these women hoped to move up and ultimately out of clerical work into male jobs.

My respondents estimated that twenty to twenty-five women at a time had attended the City Women's lunchtime meetings. One woman I spoke with considered such gatherings to have been primarily social, a "consciousness-raising type of activity." However, another pointed out that they attracted women office workers from many different departments, allowing them to get to know one another; and as she said, "They did a really good job. They got the women together, and they got the facts down, and [later] they presented them . . . [to the union and to the City Council] ."

Throughout this period, the City Women for Advancement also edged toward the idea of comparable worth as they grappled for more effective strategies to assist clerical women. They became increasingly aware that only a few women were moving into better-paying jobs. Although they continued to press for such opportunities, they felt provoked to draw comparisons between the jobs they seemed stuck in and the higher-paid, male-dominated jobs. At first, as several women explained, these comparisons were drawn only very informally.

One longtime office worker described the evolution of her thinking. According to civil service requirements, a clerical, no matter how long she had been with the city, had to have a written test, a skills test, and an oral interview each time she applied to move up the job ladder. My respondent resented this as "constantly having to prove yourself"; because she had progressed up the clerical

[6] Official affirmative action rhetoric includes such statements as the following: " . . . positive and innovative action to assure that all possible barriers to employment of members of minority groups and women . . . are eliminated. . . . This includes initiation and continuance of aggressive efforts to attract and assist members of these groups to qualify for employment and advancement within the City system" (City of San Jose 1984, 6; emphasis added).

track from entry-level typist to executive secretary, she felt she had proved herself many times over. She complained to other women office workers that the men in city jobs were not constantly being tested: for many of their jobs, she knew, only an interview was required. Over time she became progressively more angry. Finally, in one of the secretarial exams a question asked: "Would you run errands for the boss's wife?" This so enraged the women test takers that they stormed up to the personnel office to protest. My respondent clearly developed a sense of the inequities clerical women face, and she understood them within a gender-based frame. This orientation contributed to her later support for comparable worth. When we spoke in 1985, she told me that five years earlier she had known all the male-female comparisons for clericals (from the comparable worth study); she said she'd had them all "down cold."

Another longtime secretary for the city explained how she began to compare the men and women, framing her complaints in gender terms. Each time salary raises came up, she saw that the men were receiving larger increases than the women: "There was a group of women who for years talked about how unequal we felt the pay raises were in the city between the primarily male and primarily female jobs."

Since educational requirements had been the initial point of contention with the city and the most overt cause of the clericals' blocked mobility, several women began drawing informal comparisons with the educational requirements of male-dominated jobs. When they found that many men in categories requiring only an eighth-grade education were better paid than they were, the women became resentful. One respondent explained how angry they were when they realized they made less than men who washed cars for the city! The City Women for Advancement began to document these education-salary comparisons more formally. My second respondent quoted above described this effort in some detail:

We did a study, years and years ago [approximaely 1975 or 1976], and at that point it wasn't called comparable worth. It was just kind of a study to see how different the salaries were for female-dominated and male-dominated classes—which evolved [several years later] into the comparable worth thing. . . . We didn't go to the outside or look at what other cities did. We just looked at classifications versus education versus salary, just to see where all the classes fell.

At that time, it wasn't related to the union [AFSCME Local 101] at all.

But afterwards, after we'd made the charts, we started talking to people in the union about it, asking if it could be used as a basis for salary negotiations. But we didn't really delve into it in any great depth—we didn't really push for it. We always had kind of talked about the inequities that existed, whenever a group of women would get together. But we didn't really begin to push for any changes to be made until we started talking about the Hay [job evaluation] study.

An important step toward comparable worth was taken in 1977, when the City Women for Advancement presented their report, "Affirmative Action and City Women," to the city council. The report made some twenty recommendations for increasing the mobility of clerical women. In addition to the need for bridge classifications and credit for work experience, recommendations included increasing recruiting and training for nontraditional jobs and instituting job sharing and flexible hours. Such recommendations (with the possible exceptions of job sharing and flextime) again reflect the affirmative action model of mobility, with its advocacy of increased opportunities for job movement. Furthermore, as one woman explained, the recommendations were not actual demands for which the women were prepared to fight; they were merely requests for the council and city management's consideration and eventual managerial implementation. Female employees, however, had great immediate interest in the proposals, and over two hundred women packed the council chambers for the presentation (Gruber 1977).

Although the report of the City Women emphasized enhanced opportunities for job mobility, it also proposed one very new idea: that women's jobs no longer be paid according to "their normal value in the marketplace" (Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983, 359). In salary negotiations that year, clerical women requested a 27.5 percent increase, based on their study comparing male and female job requirements and their new idea that the market value for clerical work was unfair, or simply wrong. At that time, however, the wage request was primarily a symbolic gesture from which little actual gain was expected. The women were not prepared, so early on, to press for nonmarket, comparison-based wages, in part because of the novelty of the idea, but also because of the nature of the "top-down" affirmative action framework and their own lack of labor identification. As several writers have observed, however, increasing people's awareness of gender-based pay inequities can be like opening the proverbial Pandora's box

(e.g., Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983; Oakland Tribune 7/7/81).

Two women's comments illustrate the excitement generated by the comparable worth issue in contrast to affirmative action. The first woman explained why she thought many women would eventually share this excitement: "People will begin to see over time, okay, here is a way to get me, and me, and me, and all of us typists or whatever [female job holders] more money —instead of just one of us getting promoted." The other woman, who had benefited personally from affirmative action, explained: "Eventually I believe women will choose other [nontraditional] fields. But women who are working now should not have to pay for that eventual adjustment. I know that many clericals are very capable—more than professionals." Many other women echoed these comments—for example:

The pay inequity between male and female jobs . . . it's something that went back to when girls grew up, they got married, they stayed home. The husband went out, he worked, and he supported the family. That's not a reality anymore! People started realizing, "Hey, that's fine. But that's a fairy tale in this day and age." And . . . because society had said this is how it's operated for hundreds of years doesn't make it right! It has to be changed. It has to start somewhere!

Ironically, the city's appointment of a full-time women's coordinator contributed to the clericals' growing politicization. I had the opportunity to interview the woman who held this position in the late 1970S. She had a strong background in civil rights, having worked on equal opportunity issues in the Vista Program and then as equal opportunity specialist for another California community. As part of her job in San Jose, she became involved with the City Women for Advancement and assisted in the writing of "Affirmative Action and City Women." Her presence in an official capacity lent added legitimacy to the group's actions, even as they increasingly came to oppose city management.

In addition to working with department heads to increase the representation of women in male-dominated jobs, the women's coordinator supported comparable worth, explaining she felt it was a just claim for women workers. The best approach for achieving comparable worth in her view, however, was the "top down" model of affirmative action; for employees, it was appropriate only to pre-

sent recommendations to the city administration and the council, and to leave actual policy making to them. She did not support comparable worth as a union strategy and, in fact, held rather antiunion views. She vehemently opposed the 1981 strike: "In the past, I felt I was in conflict with the union. We did work together, but there was not a good mutual feeling. I had a problem with the whole strike issue. Certainly things couldn't have been accomplished as quickly [without a strike]. And comparable worth was a timely thing with the media and the mayor being a woman. But strikes are a dirty thing."

Despite such antilabor sentiments, the women's coordinator did cooperate, within the City Women for Advancement, with AFSCME Local 101 business agent Maxine Jenkins.^[7] Jenkins, credited with introducing the formal notion of comparable worth to the clericals, had arrived in San Jose with a background in both feminist and union activity and a commitment to integrating the two (see Balser 1987, 129–130; Foner 1980, 503–504). With the participation of both a city official and a union official, the City Women became an important channel between nonunion and union women. Although not a labor-affiliated group, some of the City Women members had been union members, though inactive ones; the presence of Jenkins, along with joint support for the comparable worth issue, led to increases in union membership and activity. Two women, for example, told me that it was while active in City Women that they first realized the need for unions, as they saw the need for real power in bargaining. Thus, the City Women for Advancement not only built support for comparable worth, but also legitimated a union presence, illustrating that a labor strategy could be used to address gender issues.^[8]

[7] Jenkins, AFSCME Local 101 business agent in the late 1970s, left in 1980, before the job evaluation study was finished and before the comparable worth strike. I was unfortunately unable to contact her for this study, and later in this chapter when I refer to my interview with the union business agent I refer to her successor, Bill Callahan.

[8] Analysts concerned with the "organizability" of clerical workers reach similar conclusions on the importance of some prior form of association both to expose women to a union approach and to illustrate that unions can be appropriate for women. One activist, for example, writes that prior forms of organization can represent "the phase of building a sense of collective identity and the will to organize which must precede the traditional union organizing methods" (Cameron 1986, 109). Strom, in her historical studies of women's organizing, also notes the necessity to convey the message that unions are appropriate for women (1983, 381).

Librarians

During the same period, San Jose's predominantly female librarians were also struggling to extend the goals of affirmative action and moving toward an embrace of comparable worth. Approximately seventy-five library professionals were employed by the city, of whom 80–85 percent were female (Pifarre 1984, 1985). In the mid-1970s this group had formed its own organization, the Concerned Library Active Workers (CLAW). CLAW, like the group for clericals, City Women, was formed to deal with the specific advancement issues facing library employees, who confronted a different situation from office workers. These women professionals also desired greater socioeconomic attainment, but the idea of moving into male jobs, as affirmative action would require, had little appeal. Many of these women had invested a great deal in their education (or in gaining the equivalent on-the-job experience), as library jobs require bachelors or even masters degrees in library science (or the equivalent experience). This investment would be forfeited if they changed fields. As in most traditional women's professions, however, librarians face an essentially flat lifetime career trajectory and earnings curve.

Aside from requiring the loss of investment in their careers, many librarians felt that the affirmative action model of mobility was insulting, for it implies that women who have chosen traditionally feminine fields are to blame for their low earnings (Remick and Steinberg 1984, 294–295). In interviews, several women commented that city officials stated that if they wanted the higher rewards, they should go into male jobs. Librarians in San Jose, in the atmosphere created by affirmative action efforts, came deeply to resent this implication, and felt strongly that no woman should be forced to change jobs merely to receive fair pay. For library employees, the struggle that developed in the mid-1970s represented an attempt to achieve upward mobility within the library field, whereas clericals focused on the requirements and practices involved in moving up and out of clerical work. Both groups, however, pushed the limits of what affirmative action policies can offer.

One librarian explained the bureaucratic mechanisms involved in their early efforts to gain special salary increases. Employees in any job class could appeal a pay raise by showing external labor

market comparisons to justify special adjustments (over and above the general increase). Librarians, of course, could not easily draw external comparisons demonstrating underpayment, as nearly all library work is performed by women. Another avenue, then, was to contest the job specification—to argue that it did not include the full range of actual responsibilities and that therefore a salary adjustment was warranted. But with either approach, the appeal process was lengthy and frustrating. Another librarian involved with CLAW during this period recalled:

I started in the library ten years ago [1974]. . . . When we'd say we wanted to raise our salaries in the library and they'd say [and here she imitated their feigned innocence]: "Okay, sure, fine. What are librarians in the next jurisdiction getting?" [She laughed softly.] Well, of course, we were all getting coolie wages because there was no sense comparing me to another coolie in another jurisdiction!

I then asked if they had ever gotten any special increases. She replied: "We did get some small increases, but it took years to lay your case for it." Later this woman commented with great vehemence on the pejorative aspect of affirmative action: "I don't want to leave librarianship to make an adequate salary in some field that pays more money but is . . . is . . . . Why is that [field] more financially rewarding and less emotionally satisfying, less intellectually satisfying? The only explanation I could come up with finally was because it's [library work is] run by women, and that's why it's not valued."

Another librarian and CLAW activist also explained what was wrong with an affirmative action approach:

The city has said: "We really think what we really need to do in the long run is to get the women into these male occupations." Well, then who the heck is gonna do the other jobs that are important?! . . . What they're saying is that those jobs [our jobs] are not important . . whereas we say they are important jobs. And some people have an interest in doing surveying, and some people have an interest in working in libraries, and some people have an interest in working with computers—and we're not all the same. But that doesn't mean that one job is less important, or less valuable, or should have less status or less money than the others!

In such comments one can see how affirmative action provoked the changing consciousness of these "semiprofessional" women.

They had perceived the offers of enhanced advancement opportunities, yet when they reached for tangible returns they were slapped back down. The pejorative implications became clear, and women reacted angrily to any suggestion that their choice of occupation was to blame for their low earnings. Librarians were provoked to reframe their complaints in gender terms as well, for the crux of the problem seemed to be that their work, a traditionally female profession, was considered of low value compared with male fields. In fact, one of the few male librarians, Mike Ferrero, told me that when he first heard of the comparable worth notion, "it was just like a light going off [sic ] in my head," because it so precisely illuminated the library workers' experience.

The emergence of comparable worth among librarians echoes earlier strains or sentiments common to the female semiprofessions as a whole. As occupational sociologists have defined them, the semiprofessions lack the full authority and autonomy within their employing organizations of the classic professions. Therefore, the ongoing dilemma for such fields is how to establish professional status and gain more autonomy within organizational settings. Because they cannot claim a monopoly over any systematic body of knowledge and theoretical training, it is difficult for groups such as teachers, nurses, social workers, or librarians to claim the status of such occupations as medicine, law, or the traditional academic fields (Etzioni 1969; Ritzer 1972). For women in these fields in the mid-1970s, the promises held out by affirmative action, as well as the contributions of feminist discourse in general, only reinforced the "role strain" already present. Certainly, in San Jose this occupational role strain became reframed as a gender issue and recast as part of the larger problem of female subordination. Without the larger social context, or the immediate local environment in which affirmative action for women was high on the public agenda, such occupational issues would not have taken on the same "gendered" formulation.^[9]

Semiprofessionals have also typically had difficulty embracing

[9] Recent attempts in the teaching field to impose greater "professional" standards represent a response to semiprofessional role strain that does not use a gendered formulation. By imposing such things as proficiency exams and more complex certification procedures for primary and secondary instruction (predominantly female fields), some hope to justify much higher salaries (Spencer 1988, 182).

An interesting, but nonfeminist, framing of semiprofessional role strain as agender issue occurred in social work during the 1950s. To counter the negative "feminine" image of the field, efforts were made to recruit men, as well as to make social work more "masculine" by making it more scientific and rational (Collins 1988, 190).

union strategies, because the labor union stance and blue-collar image detract from the fully professional status they emulate (Etzioni 1969; Ritzer 1972). Librarians, for example, experience this ambivalence; as one CLAW leader commented: "I don't think librarians are used to unions, and many librarians have shied away from unions as being unprofessional" (Fischer 1981, 2084). Yet she also explained that in San Jose the librarians came to feel that collective bargaining was their only viable strategy for achieving comparable worth. Therefore, in 1978 library employees from CLAW became active in the Municipal Employees Federation (MEF, the sub-group of AFSCME Local 101 of Santa Clara County representing City employees), becoming officers in order to push for comparable worth.

The courts are not going to help us very much, and legislation takes a while and may or may not be implemented. The courts are not particularly favorable to pay equity. . . . The San Diego case hasn't been settled yet. Its been in the courts six years or so, and litigation is very expensive. . . . The only way I see of achieving pay equity is through unions. . . . No one is going to give you money, and it's a lot of money . . . so it's well worth fighting for. . . . That's why you need a strong union.

(Fischer 1981, 2084)^[10]

Recreation Professionals

A third group that entered union activity at the point of the comparable worth effort was recreation workers, some fifty to fifty-five employees of the Parks and Recreation Department who work in neighborhood recreation centers throughout the city. This field was mixed with just under half of the job occupants male (Pifarre 1984, 1985), but it was viewed overwhelmingly as female sex-typed work because it involves working with children as a direct extension of the public schools. One woman's story is instructive in recounting the changing awareness through this period.

[10] Librarians in San Jose were very aware of the suit brought by women librarians against the city of San Diego, California, where the affirmative action officer had failed to act on their report of salary inequities among professional employees (Galloway and Archuleta 1980, 168–169).

This respondent had been a recreation professional with the city since the late 1960s, although she had initially planned to become a high school teacher. In college she had begun working part-time in an after-school playground program; she "developed a real love for the recreation field," changed her major area of study, and took a full-time job when one became available. By the mid-1970s, however, with the effects of affirmative action beginning to be felt, she became increasingly distressed that her chosen field was a "deadend street" as far as any further advancement was concerned. It bothered her that recreation work was not taken seriously, and she began to realize that this was because it was women's work. She then began to notice what the librarians, her fellow female professionals, were doing: "Actually, library professionals face the same sorts of barriers in employment that recreation professionals do. People have to fight real hard to be looked at as professionals."

Consequently, this respondent decided to become more active in MEF, as the librarians had, and got elected to the negotiating team to "make more noise" for the recreation employees. Like the librarians, however, she found that her motives, which initially were narrowly construed for the benefit of her own profession, quickly became enlarged and extended to women workers in general. She had already had the sense that her work was denigrated because it was women's work, and therefore she quickly became "embroiled in the comparable worth issue" once on the negotiating team. Describing her attitude at that point, she told me: "We were fighting like anything for the women's jobs."

For this woman, as for many librarians, concern with her own advancement, fueled by the notion of entitlement that affirmative action gave women, led to a broader politicization. She came both to reframe her concerns as gender issues and to enthusiastically endorse union activity to pursue her new sense of interests as a woman worker. In fact, she later left city employment to become a full-time union employee, organizing other women and working for comparable worth in other localities.

The Union: Women Professional and Clerical Workers

The realization that they could not attain their goals through traditional "top-down" approaches led many San Jose women workers to

become interested in union activity. Interestingly, the tendency of affirmative action to produce this unintended consequence was noted in an earlier analysis. An organizing manual written specifically for public-sector women noted that one result of affirmative action implementation generally is women's development of higher aspirations; but because these expectations are not met, the author notes, "employers are actually driving women and minorities into the arms of unions" (Samuels 1975, 240). Put differently, what is first framed as a gender issue, as women's blocked mobility or the denigration of women's work, converges with a class perspective as women discover the usefulness of unions to promote their interests as devalued workers .

In San Jose the union, MEF of AFSCME Local 101, had been primarily concerned with the male occupations, since male workers—engineering technicians, surveyors, construction inspectors, and most city maintenance workers—were most active prior to 1977–1978 (the police and fire departments have separate employee organizations). The women, although represented by MEF, did not participate actively until the emergence of the comparable worth issue in 1977.^[11] As one long-time city clerical told me, "I was a member of the union for less than a year. I joined when I first came to the city [appoximately 1975]. But I quit because the technicians got such a big raise that year, more of a raise than us, so I wanted to keep the dues money for myself."

As women began to agitate for their own demands, and as these began to center on wages for women's work rather than opportunities to change jobs, the usefulness of the union as a collective bargaining authority became clear. Women from both City Women for Advancement and CLAW became active union members in the late 1970s. In 1978, in fact, librarians took over most of the official positions in MEF. As one librarian commented in a published interview, "Within CLAW, several articulate people surfaced around the issue of pay equity, and we decided that the union was the best vehicle for pursuing pay equity. . . . I don't want to say that we took over the union, but the real activists in the union, which is a broad-based union, were library employees" (Fischer 1981, 2080).

The new interest of women employees in union activity was en-

[11] MEF represents some two thousand city employees (Labor Notes 1981b), but several respondents estimated that only half that number were dues-paying members.

hanced by the fact that the locals business agent was a woman. By all accounts Maxine Jenkins was a central figure in building support both for affirmative action reforms for women and for comparable worth. Through her involvement with City Women for Advancement she was able to create a more positive image of union activity among women who were described to me as "just never having been exposed to a union mentality before."

For librarians, comparable worth was the catalyst that prompted both involvement in the union and a sense of identification with women workers outside their narrow occupational group. Comparable worth was "the light going off" that connected their perceived interests as "professionals" struggling for greater recognition with the interests and struggles of other women workers. Although tensions remained between the groups, this connection was crucial politically and moved the group closer to framing their concerns in class terms.

After the women had taken over their union in 1978, they made comparable worth the top bargaining priority, and quickly circulated a position paper to this effect (Beyette 1981). Yet because there were few examples of successful comparable worth efforts on which to model their tactics, activists were not sure how to proceed. Maxine Jenkins had come to San Jose specifically hoping to use comparable worth to organize clerical workers, and the national AFSCME leadership had begun to promote the comparable worth strategy (see, e.g., Grune 1980, 131, 152–153). Yet San Jose women were also aware of the stalled Washington State efforts, which involved "sister" AFSCME locals (as well as the stalled case of the San Diego librarians mentioned above). Washington efforts had been initiated in 1974, with the authorization of the first job evaluation to compare male-and female-dominated jobs. While this study had found large discrepancies between male and female salaries for equivalently ranked jobs, the legislature had declined to appropriate any funds to remedy the inequity. An update of the study corroborated the earlier results, but by 1978 Washington employees had still seen no action (Johansen 1984, 19–20; Remick 1984, 102–104).

Nevertheless, it seemed to San Jose activists that a formal study was a necessary first step toward equitable wages. But the city immediately rejected a proposal to that effect, in large part because of

the passage of state Proposition 13, which drastically cut property taxes (Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983, 359).^[12] Ironically, later that year the city contracted with Hay Associates, a national management consulting firm, to conduct a similar salary and classification study of all management positions. According to one union source, this action was a response to "grumbling" by women managers, who may have picked up the idea from their women workers (McGuire 1982, 12). The city manager, however, maintained that the managerial study was being conducted to establish internal and external equity in order to retain management employees in the booming Silicon Valley market, not to compare male and female salaries (Flammang 1986, 816, 833). Still, AFSCME members saw their opportunity and jumped, demanding that if management were to have such an equity study, nonmanagement employees should also. When the city "reaffirmed that it was not interested in studying the relationships between male and female salaries" (Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983, 360), AFSCME members began several months of agitation aimed specifically at gaining a formal study.^[13]

Because women's blocked mobility had already been a point of contention for several years, the issue of the job evaluation became politically volatile by 1979, especially given the announcement of the management study. Agitation included intensive lobbying of the mayor and councilmembers, who were concerned with their public appearance and "feminist" credentials (Mueller 1985, 14). In addition, AFSCME organized a one day sick-out of clericals, in which 80 to 125 women participated.^[14] As one respondent com-

[12] The state also instituted a wage freeze as a condition for receiving bailout funds from its large surplus. The following year, however, the state Supreme Court ruled the freeze an unlawful restriction on the provision of the funds (Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983, 359). In addition, as Flammang (1986) documents, the healthy local economy helped San Jose to recover quickly from the aftershocks of Proposition 13.

[13] The cost of the study may have played some part in the city's rejection. Hay Associates was to charge the city $ 96,000 for the study of nonmanagement positions (Fischer 1981, 2085), and the total estimated cost to the city including staff and employee time off-the-job was $ 500,000 (Keppel 1981; Labor Notes 1981b). Yet with a total city budget in 1980 of $ 400 million and personnel costs of approximately $ 95 million (Flammang 1986), the cost of the study was certainly not the major reason for the city's opposition.

[14] The low estimate originates from the city administration (see Farnquist,Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983, 360), while the upper estimate originates from a union activist among my respondents. My respondent also stressed that this number was significant, being out of 515 clericals in the city; the sick-out did not include female professionals.

mented, "A hundred twenty-five clericals from City Hall went out in that sick-out. And a week after that, the study was agreed to by the city."

Although the city did then agree to the study, it would make no promises on implementation; it merely agreed to review the results. Thus for almost all of 1980 the study itself, while just the first step from the union's point of view, became the focus of activity and attention. The union maintained all along that the study would reveal serious underpayment of women, yet, as several respondents explained, the city manager had selected Hay Associates because he was confident their methods would find no inequities. Concurrent Hay studies of Wisconsin and Minnesota state employment in fact did reinforce the status quo; Hay consultants justified what disparities were found according to market factors. However, there was no union involvement in those studies (Grune 1980, 131, 153), and as my respondents pointed out, San Jose's city manager had not expected the union to stay involved in the evaluation process. In fact, AFSCME had already won a major concession: Maxine Jenkins had persuaded the council (against the city manager's advice) to instruct Hay to deemphasize market factors for a fair result (Flammang 1986, 831).

Politics and Science: The Job Evaluation Study

The entire job evaluation episode in San Jose exemplifies the tension between science and politics in the control of state policy making, a tension that several social theorists have identified as peculiarly characteristic of contemporary society. Following Max Weber's analysis of politics in modern bureaucracies, Habermas (1971, 1975) posits that science, considered the realm of value-free inquiry, becomes a legitimating ideology for governmental action. This process obscures both the class and power relations served by and represented within such action. Moreover, the ideology itself has a tendency to reframe moral and political questions as merely technical issues; that is, questions of what our rights to specific en-

titlements should be are reduced to questions of the efficiency or appropriateness of techniques, and questions of what ought to be are reduced to discussions of what is empirically verifiable. Because of this "scientization of politics," according to Habermas, politics in turn becomes "depoliticized." In other words, control by bureaucratic managers and technical experts increases, while broad-based participation in public debate over policy goals is precluded.^[15]

In San Jose, these tendencies can be seen in the struggle over the job evaluation study at its various stages. On the one hand, city officials attempted to keep control of the evaluation process, mystifying the methodology used in order to foreclose debate. For example, the city had originally planned to include only one employee representative on the ten-member evaluation committee, and had not intended even to provide the union with a copy of the completed report (Fischer 1983, 2081). Hay Associates also contributed to this mystification, as they certainly had an interest in protecting their copyrighted techniques; by 1981 Hay had conducted more job evaluation studies nationwide than any other firm (Van Beers 1981, 42). On the other hand, the union activists, who were aware of their threatened loss of control, had to balance the need for validated empirical proof of their claims against the need to question and contest the methodology—that is, to question its purposes and the interests it was designed to serve. In fact, as was mentioned in Chapter 2, job evaluation techniques are hardly neutral. Originally designed to promote managerial control over wage setting, they primarily rationalize existing job hierarchies, and are thus problematic for establishing pay equity policies (Sorenson 1982, Treiman 1979).

The president of AFSCME Local 101, librarian Mike Ferrero, explained why activists pushed for the Hay study despite the potential for "scientization" of the process:

I saw the study mainly as an avenue to use . . . a tough politics we could develop to raise salaries for my members, a good many of whom were women and had been underpaid for a long time. . . . You know, when you

[15] Other examples of this scientization of politics are numerous. One can point to debates surrounding the issues of poverty and of arms control as two examples. So often these debates have become mired in technical questions, such as how best to measure poverty (Plotnick and Skidmore 1977; Zeitlin 1977), or how much a particular weapons system will cost. And a consideration of the ends at stake or the interests represented is lost.

go into negotiations one of the things you always need no matter what is data . . . . So what this was, when we decided to do the study . . . was a gamble that out of that study would come a lot of data that would be a valuable tool for us. . . . We assumed going in that if we didn't lose some kind of contact with the study, some kind of control, the study would show fairly substantial inequity between men and women's jobs.

I think that at that point the entire strategy was, what did we need to do to keep the study on track? So if the politicians got cold feet they couldn't dump it; so they couldn't in some way sabotage it; so they couldn't get the results of it skewed in some way that either the results did not come out the way they should have, or that someone could yell "foul play," or that in some way the credibility of the study was questioned. . . . I felt if we could have a lot to do kind of with the internal dynamics of the study and doing the evaluations, that the results would be pretty positive—even if there were some problems. By and large, the results would be something we could use, they'd be tangible.

I asked at that point what he and other union activists had known of the Hay system, and he responded quickly:

[If we were] getting into squabbles with the city at that point over whether to use Hay or use some other system to do the study, then they could just reject the Hay. And I was afraid then we'd just be "out to sea without a paddle." So it was pretty pragmatic in deciding to just go with Hay.

In looking at it, the Hay methodology—at least as far as I could analyze it, I didn't see any clear way we could get hurt by it. . . . The city was also trying to be very careful not to let a lot of information about the methodology out so you could grab ahold of it. But we managed from different sources to get some substantial information on their methodology. We got some help from our national union, who was not a real big fan of Hay Associates. But by that time, that was the game in town. So I wasn't about to say we weren't going to play.^[16]

Another library activist explained that while the city was very secretive with information on the Hay techniques, library workers did extensive searches in business and management publications for references to the methods. Eventually they found articles reviewing the Hay system, including copyrighted charts and techniques. It is ironic that the occupational or professional skills of this group, so underrated, served them so well politically.

[16] Very likely the national unions animosity toward Hay Associates was due to the experiences in Minnesota and Wisconsin discussed above. Both these cases also were instigated by AFSCME locals (Grune 1980, 131, 152).

The union stayed involved in the study process, combating the potential "scientization" of comparable worth, primarily in two ways: by contributing to the job description process, and by participating on the evaluation committee. Once it was decided to use Hay Associates, Hay's procedures did determine the parameters of the debate. The activists succeeded in influencing the results only by intervening at these key preliminary stages. As Ferrero, the union president, had said, to get the study and keep it on track was the entire strategy at that point. But the need for legitimated measurement of wage discrepancies, crucial for future bargaining, overrode concerns with the shortcomings of the methodology.

Job Descriptions

The first step of the Hay method involves writing job descriptions. Employees begin by filling out questionnaires regarding the tasks and responsibilities of their jobs. These questionnaires are then collected and analyzed, and job specifications written by personnel analysts are sent back to employees for their approval. Because of the direct involvement of employees, job description was an obvious area in which San Jose comparable worth activists saw an opportunity to exert influence. Union clerical and library activists organized lunch-hour workshops on the questionnaires. They emphasized that women should train other women in this task, and that every subtle possibility for enhancement of one's job description should be used, as the specifications would later become the basis for the assignment of factor points.^[17]

One clerical activist described her involvement in some of this training. She explained that clericals had a fairly negative attitude at first because from their perspective, earlier classification studies, conducted by and for the city administration, had never accomplished anything. She felt she was able, however, to convince the women that this study would be different, and that their participation could make a difference. Her major goal, she explained, was to keep women from writing "the run of the mill kind of thing," to keep them from writing, "'Oh well, my job isn't very important;

[17] In the Hay system (and other factor point job evaluation systems), jobs are assigned points according to a set of weighted compensable factors. Total factor point scores are then the basis for the ranking of jobs into salary grades. (See next section on the evaluation committee for more details.)

I just do this, and this and this,' but to [get them to] look at it on a more positive level and say: 'I make these decisions. I have these responsibilities.'"

From all reports the library workers particularly excelled in this aspect of the job evaluation process. Patt Curia, a library activist, when interviewed on comparable worth for the Library Journal, said: "The librarians knew that this step was really important because the job description was the basis for evaluating the worth of each job. We protested some descriptions three or four times because we wanted all of the important things we do included. . . . The library job descriptions were probably the most thorough [in the city]" (Fischer 1981, 2080). Two librarians I interviewed corroborated Patt Curia's point. One, for example, commented: "I worked with a lot of individuals on what terms to use, how to best portray their jobs." And the other added: "Library people went over them and over them, and said, 'No, this isn't right. No, this has got to be changed.' We had the perception that this would be the basis for the assignment of points."

When I asked what they had emphasized in the descriptions, they responded that they knew what kinds of things the Hay methodology emphasized. In addition to supervisory responsibilities, they knew it was important to stress the amount of money or proportion of the budget one was responsible for. One gave as an example of what a librarian might write, "I'm a supervisor. I'm also responsible for this building because the public is in the building. I'm responsible for whether we're buying the right books with the $ 30,000 a year of taxes in book money." The other librarian agreed, adding that instead of just writing, "Well, I help people get books," the librarians would put down: "I'm responsible for a $ 1.5 million book collection."

In fact, the librarians were so successful in this aspect of the study that other groups were resentful. One engineering technician, a woman who had switched to this male-dominated job category, told me that she felt personnel ought to have looked at "what people really do, and not at how they describe what they do. Because some people are just better at describing. . . . Librarians are in the word business anyway." She also commented that the technicians had just taken the whole study "very casually," while the librarians obviously had not.

In addition to affecting the job evaluation outcome itself (that is,

influencing the job specifications to gain more points in the scoring), this training process served an educational purpose. Focusing attention on the questionnaires and on how best to describe one's job helped promote the idea that women's work is underpaid, helped women find new esteem in their jobs, and generally helped build interest in the study and a sense of anticipation for the results. As one activist put it: "We went through a tremendous information-education campaign to teach people about comparable worth when we taught people how to fill out the questionnaires. It was about a year and a half of constant articles in the newsletter, special meetings, lunchtime workshops, and special leaflets. . . . And if we hadn't of done that I don't think we'd have gotten the support that we did by 1981." And one of the librarians quoted at length above commented:

At the beginning some of the outstanding [i.e., politically active] clerical women had to practically beat it into the heads of the other women that your job is more responsible, more involved, a higher level than that guy out there who is cutting the grass. And they had to just drum it, and drum it, and drum it, and drum it—because people are affected by the way their job is seen by other people.

One of these "outstanding clericals," when asked whether she felt the training had been effective, attested to its educational value: "I felt it was very effective because it accomplished a couple of things. It made some people who were in lower-level [job] classes . . . feel better about what they're doing. . . . I also felt that it made a great many more aware of what was going on, and a lot of them got excited about the possibility that they could be in on a history-making event."

The Evaluation Committee

The makeup of the ten-member evaluation committee, whose task it would be to review the job specifications and assign points to approximately one hundred benchmark jobs,^[18] became the next point

[18] Benchmark jobs, selected for their representativeness, were chosen by a labor-management steering committee, although where they felt it necessary the evaluation committee later added several benchmarks. The points on the benchmarks are used to assign points to all other jobs, after which the male and female jobs can be compared.

of contention between the union and city management. The city manager had intended to have only one union representative present; the rest would be management employees. But the union protested this immediately, personnel relented, and the committee ultimately consisted of nine nonmanagement employees, with two nonvoting representatives, one from city management and one from Hay Associates. The voting members were to be selected from different departments and job categories, from among the "best" employees, that is, long-term employees with good knowledge of their job class and the other jobs in their department. Although candidates had to be formally approved by personnel, Ferrero, AFSCME Local 101 president, said this was only a minor problem—the "best" employees were often those most involved in the union and comparable worth efforts. Furthermore, personnel's involvement only gave the evaluations more credibility. Ferrero remarked that it would have been less effective had the job evaluations been seen as "just a union study." Again, the union's desire for legitimacy had to be balanced against the need for control of the procedure.

The final committee included Patt Curia, the senior librarian quoted above; the woman recreation professional also quoted above; a legal secretary; a gardener; one employee each from the general services and planning departments; a representative of the trades; and a police records clerk. Several respondents pointed specifically to the makeup of the evaluation committee, in addition to the fact that comparison was being made of male and female jobs, as making San Jose's a precedent-setting study. The clerical activist mentioned above commented further that in the job description workshops the knowledge that the specifications would be evaluated by one's peers contributed to the excitement felt about the study itself.

Evaluation committee decisions were made by consensus; members would discuss each job until a unanimous agreement on its score could be reached. (The evaluation committee met two days a week for some four months to score the benchmark positions.) However, the compensable factors, their components, and the assigned factor weightings were predetermined according to the "Hay Guide Chart-Profile Method," the copyrighted techniques of Hay Associates (Hay Group 1982).

One question I asked all my respondents was whether they felt the Hay measurement techniques were in any way biased in how

points were assigned to jobs.^[19] Many did not know exactly how the points were assigned; they just hoped that having every aspect of ones job included in the job description, described in the best possible language, would lead to the highest possible score. Beyond that, they felt that having their representatives on the evaluation committee would prevent any unfair scoring. For example, one union activist not on the evaluation committee commented that the process "was removed and complex enough that on the outside, we don't know—we don't see what kind of weights were given by the Hay system." Most respondents did not explicitly consider the possibility, which several feminist social scientists have raised, that the construction of the compensable factor components and weightings can itself contain a deeply embedded bias against women's work.^[20]

I interviewed two women who were on the evaluation committee. The recreation professional told me how uncomfortable she had felt with the Hay methodology:

We had a sheet with little boxes and you wrote numbers in. . . . And I just didn't see how . . . looking over all these little areas and deciding what levels all these things were at and then writing down numbers was really going to come up with an accurate evaluation of the job. . . . We'd talk about the job for forty-five minutes, and then we'd start assigning points to it. We'd each go and write our points up on the overhead projector. . . . At first . . . staring at this sheet with numbers, and picking one from column A and two from column B, and writing a number down at the bottom—it was a little scary.

She explained the attitude of the women on the committee, remarking that, despite the Hay charts' limitations, "we fought; I mean all the women were saying: 'We're going to make sure that

[19] Most job evaluation procedures, including that of Hay, assign points on the basis of four criteria generally accepted to be "universal": (1) skill and knowledge, (2) mental demands or level of problem solving involved, (3) accountability, and (4) working conditions. Each factor is broken down into components, and varying weights are assigned. The sum of the various weighted factor points gives each job a total score (Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983, 361; Hay 1982; Treiman 1979).

[20] Sorenson (1982), for example, has pointed out that the skill and knowledge factor in the Hay system is operationalized such that skills characteristic of women's work receive less weight. Van Beers (1981) has made a similar point regarding the working conditions factor. Moreover, Remick (1978) has suggested that many significant aspects of women's work go unmeasured entirely, because most factorpoint systems such as Hay's have been modeled on male jobs. (Summarized in Blum 1983; more recently see Acker 1987, 1989; Remick 1984; Steinberg and Haignere 1987; Treiman 1984).

the women's jobs get more points than any others.' Even though a lot of people will tell you: 'Oh no, we were really unbiased.' But we weren't. We were fighting like anything for the women's jobs. . . . We fought and fought and fought."

Both women I spoke with discussed the one conflict with the Hay system that had arisen in the evaluation committee, over the notion of "job stress." Library workers wanted job stress included as a compensable factor, and the other union members backed the suggestion. The Hay consultant argued, however, that job stress was not a factor to use in a proper evaluation, explaining: "What is stress to one person is excitement and glory to another." According to my respondents, the fight became so intense it nearly stopped the entire evaluation process.

Although "stress" is a topic of serious academic research (e.g., Kahn 1981), as well as a virtual "buzzword" in media and pop psychology (e.g., Bolch 1980), it is often only vaguely defined. One researcher identifies the "common element" in stress as "emotional arousal to threatening and unpleasant aspects of life situations" (Kahn 1981, 28). But a survey reported in Science News (1981) called stress "a sign of the times" produced by "our society in transition," particularly by "the new social roles of the sexes." When I asked respondents what they meant by the term, they gave imprecise answers. The woman recreation professional gave a long reply, beginning with many troubling aspects of her own job:

Well, outside of cramped working conditions, personal security was a real problem. . . . I worked in an inner-city park that was real isolated—and sometimes I was there by myself until ten o'clock at night. [Then she listed:] The ability to meet deadlines and put on programs with shrinking budgets. The constant need for interaction with the community, which was real diverse. Working with community groups from "low rider" clubs to some of the gangs that had developed, to neighborhood associations and merchants' associations. . . . And being the only one responsible for it.

She then spoke of the woman police clerk on the committee: "She made a really good argument for stress. . . . She was booking

suspects . . . and having to deal with cops and that whole cop mentality."

It seemed to me that the main point in this definition was to underscore how hard the women's jobs were, or what was "effort-full" about them. In a sense, this reproduces the notion of comparable worth itself. To these women, saying "My job is extremely stressful" was as if to say, "My job is damned hard work, work as hard as what men do." The women were aware, of course, that the belief that women's work is somehow "natural" and thereby less taxing, less like "work" than men's jobs, is widespread in our society. In fact, one of my interviews with a male technical worker bore this out: it was his opinion that recreation and library employees did not deserve higher pay because they have "cushy jobs," jobs that are "all fun and games."^[21]

In this dispute, then, the issue of stress took on what amounted to symbolic importance. It signified the women's resistance to the evaluation of their jobs being defined and controlled by technical experts, as well as their skepticism toward the Hay procedures. It expressed their suspicion that the process was not wholly scientific or interest-free, that the Hay factors might be biased against considering the full value of women's work, and their frustration at not being able to control the evaluation process. In the end, however, because they did not have the power to redefine the parameters of the study, they decided to "play the game." As the recreation professional explained, "we finally had to make a decision about the value of stopping. . . . And we decided that it just wasn't worth it. We decided to give it a shot, since we knew it was the only shot we were going to have [at comparable worth]."^[22]

The Trend Line

One technical element of the job evaluation procedure on which comparable worth activists had little influence was the determina-

[21] Women have internalized such stereotypes as well. One woman commented to me when discussing this conflict, "You know, I could not understand it when librarians and library workers talked about stress. Because they are all in nice buildings, they help people find books. I did not see how that was stressful."

[22] For a somewhat similar incident, with conflict expressed around the notion of stress, see Acker 1989.

tion of the "trend line," the regression line of average salaries for the various factor point levels.^[23] The technical nature of the trend line, on which the eventual wage settlement was based, obscures the underlying political dimension. Yet the line itself, the central gauge for determining the wage disparities and adjustments, represents a political compromise as much as an objective measure of the wage inequities. Activists well understood that the averages on which the trend line was based had been biased downward by including the lower wages of the female-dominated jobs. That is, if a trend line had been calculated from the male jobs alone, average wages for each level would have been much higher, resulting in even greater disparities with women's jobs.

Even so, the final Hay report documented sizable wage inequities; thus the comparable worth activists can be considered successful in their efforts to politicize other aspects of the procedure. The Hay report indicated that, on average, male jobs were 8 to 15 percent above the trend line, while female jobs were 2 to 10 percent below, with many jobs falling even lower (Van Beers 1981, 11–12). On the whole, then, the study found that female-dominated jobs paid 15–25 percent less than the comparable male-dominated jobs, amounting to an average of $ 3,000 less per year (Beyette 1981; Johnston 1981, 164). The extent of such wage disparities verified by the study made a strong impression on employees (leading ultimately to the strike), as well as on the community. Some of the more glaring inequities were widely reported in the media. For example, the Los Angeles Times (Beyette 1981) highlighted five dramatic comparisons:

the mayor's secretary earned 47 percent less than a senior air conditioning mechanic;

a nurse earned $ 9,120 a year less than a fire truck mechanic;

a senior librarian made $ 5,304 a year less than a senior chemist;

[23] The salary trend line represents the regression line expressing the relation between job evaluation points and median salary for each of the fifteen salary grades. These salary grades were determined by rank ordering all jobs according to their factor point scores and grouping them. A distribution was then plotted that determined where each job stood in relation to the trend line (Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983, 362; Fischer 1981, 2085; Hay 1982).

a legal secretary made $ 7,288 less a year than an equipment mechanic;

a neighborhood recreation supervisor earned $ 710 biweekly, whereas a gardening coordinator earned $ 831.

Such results, when added to the weight of the earlier Washington State findings, were compelling evidence for the justice of comparable worth.

Although the union in San Jose was willing as a practical concession to accept the Hay calculation of the trend line as they had accepted other elements of the Hay methodology,^[24] activists did not see this acceptance as final. Nor did they see the trend line as an interest-free statement of the facts. Rather, activists sensed the limits of their power to contest further the quasi-scientific techniques. In interviews they made it clear that they intended to fight "beyond the trend" in the future—especially when management salaries had been promptly raised to 10 percent above trend after their Hay study. I heard several such comments; for example: "I'm working for beyond the trend. . . . We don't want to be equal to a depressed salary. We want to be equal to a reasonable salary, which we figure is an average of men's salaries. Because you pay men what you are supposed to pay for a certain level of work and for their family support." And this:

You're not going to hear about it [changing the trend line] from managers, but I think they realize it [can be changed]. When they adjusted their salaries it went above . . . no problem with that concept. Suddenly when you're talking about our salaries you're talking about a mythical trend line. And then, when they talk to us, they're very careful not to even talk trend line. "Within a 10 percent margin of error that Hay recommends" [said sarcastically]. They mix their figures a lot. It's a problem, because if you average an adequate salary with a depressed salary, you get a depressed salary level. And then you expect me to be pleased that you've raised my salary to that level. . . . Well, I am pleased, but I am not satisfied!

[24] What San Jose activists could not have foreseen was the negative precedent this pragmatic decision would set for later cases, particularly for the Minnesota counties required by state law to implement pay equity. According to Evans and Nelson (1989, 151–160), many counties followed the San Jose example of using the lower "all-jobs" trend line as a cost-containment measure.

The Strike

When the study was completed, anticipation ran high among employees. Although all employees were told of their new salary grades, the full extent of the wage disparities was not initially made public. In fact, the city did not originally intend to give the union a copy of the completed report. (In negotiations prior to the study's completion, union representatives had walked away from the bargaining table for two weeks until the city agreed to give the union a copy of the report and to reopen salary negotiations; Fischer 1981, 2081). Even so, despite the city's attempts to keep study results confidential, copies of the salary trend line were widely circulated.

That people were well informed of the study's results was clear in my interviews. One woman, a legal secretary, not only could tell me that her job was 18 percent below the trend line, but she also wrote out a list from memory of the dozen male jobs with which her job had been rated equivalent; these included electrician, air conditioning mechanic, senior carpenter, and electrical inspector, to name a few. And a recreation professional (not the woman on the evaluation committee) reported that her job was found to be 27 percent below the average for its point level.

Negotiations for comparable worth wage adjustments began during Christmas week 1980, but they stalled after the city refused to offer what the union considered either adequate general increases or comparable worth adjustments. In fact, the city's oner took funds for comparable worth out of funds allocated for general increases (Johnston 1981). By the spring, employees' frustration was great. A very successful one-day sick-out was held, called "Hay Fever Day," to insist the city act on the study results. The city's resistance caused additional anger because the newly completed management study had been immediately implemented with, according to one respondent, "no quibbling." Some managers' pay was increased as much as 30 percent, and the city manager received a $ 13,000 a year raise (Fischer 1981, 2081). One angry woman told me, "They assumed the points were valid for them, and they were paid by the points—so we should be too!"^[25]

[25] Similarly, in Washington State an impetus for demanding the comparable worth study came from observing a management study and its implementation. There, management salaries also had been raised, but when female employeesargued that their salaries ought to be raised according to the same methodology, that methodology was suddenly called into question (Remick 1980, 407–408).

Negotiations dragged on for several more months, but in July, when the contract expired and the city's position had changed very little, a strike was called. Ferrero, president of AFSCME Local 101, recounted the events leading up to the strike:

When the study results did come out there was a great deal of real excitement. By and large, the study had come through with the kind of results we had all dreamed it would. . . . There was a lot of anger created out of management getting those increases, and then our bargaining being held up over that same issue. There was a lot of deep-seated anger in the women, even in places where we weren't terribly well organized. . . . A lot of them [women clericals] thought: "It's wonderful that the union is forcing this study, and making sure that the study is going to be done. But once the study's done, then that's when the city will move in, recognize the problem and deal with it"—and treat them fairly and justly. And when that didn't happen—now, to you and I that may be real naive, but to a lot of them that was a real awakening. And that's where the anger came from.

As he explained, many employees had expected the Hay study to effect change without any further employee pressure, although most activists had realized that "the facts" were not going to speak for themselves. Awakening to the reality that "tough politics" rather than scientific techniques would be necessary generated the momentum for the strike.

The strike lasted only nine days. A state mediator was called in, but formal bargaining did not begin until the sixth day, following informal discussions. In the meantime, the city manager sent letters to all employees threatening those staying out with termination; strikers responded by gathering at a noon rally to burn their letters in front of City Hall (Fischer 1981, 2083). In bargaining, union and city negotiators initially thought they had reached agreement, but the city council rejected the proposed settlement in a closed-door session (reportedly because of unwillingness to commit to a four-year plan). Union members were outraged. Several stormed the council chambers, and some fifty activists picketed the mayor's house.^[26] Finally, on Tuesday, July 14, the city council ap-

[26] Seven and a half years later I recontacted one union leader by phone; she still got very agitated recalling this turn of events.

proved a two-year offer and settlement was reached (Fischer 1981; McGuire 1982).

The two-year contract included $ 1.45 million for comparable worth adjustments to some 750 workers in sixty-two female-dominated classifications. This was not much more than the city had originally proposed, but the union also won a general cost-of-living increase of 15.5 percent. Initially, city management had offered only minimal cost-of-living raises, intending to fond comparable worth out of money for the general increase. Some respondents saw this as an attempt to pit men and women against each other and divide the union, but AFSCME members would not settle until both adequate equity adjustments and cost-of-living increases were agreed on.

The new contract was considered a victory for the union, but it did not bring full wage parity, which all parties agreed would have to be phased in over a longer period. The contract did bring the average level of the female-dominated jobs up to the 10 percent margin, or "cone," of error often cited by Hay consultants. The average adjustment was 9.6 percent, with the adjustments based primarily on how far ones salary level fell below the trend (thus, the largest adjustments went to those jobs farthest from the regression line) (Comparable Worth Project Newsletter 1981, 2; Farnquist, Armstrong, and Strausbaugh 1983; Flammang 1986, 826; Labor Notes 1981a; McGuire 1982). Ferrero of AFSCME Local 101 summed up the victory that this contract represented by saying: "They [the city] basically accepted the first two years of our four-year plan" (McGuire 1982, 14).

Ultimately, the dramatic image of the strike that was conveyed beyond the community may have been more significant than the actual contract. This image was created in large part by media attention, which in turn was gained by capitalizing on external events.

Comparable worth activists had received an enormous boost to their cause when, one month before the San Jose contract expired the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in the Gunther case, affirming sex-based wage discrimination in a situation of sex-segregated jobs (see Chapter 2). This announcement focused national attention on comparable worth, as well as on the situation brewing in San Jose (e.g., Newsweek 1981). To use the Supreme Court action to full advantage, AFSCME Local 101 immediately

filed an EEOC complaint against the city for failing to implement the Hay study results.^[27] Although this may actually have hardened the city's opposition (Beyette 1981; Keppel 1981), it certainly attracted even more attention, providing impetus for the union to make the dramatic move of a strike.

An entirely unrelated incident that coincidentally occurred at this same time drew national media attention to San Jose as well. In the summer of 1981, California was in the midst of the Medfly crisis (an invasion of the Mediterranean fruitfly), and Governor Jerry Brown had taken a controversial stand against aerial spraying of the insecticide malathion, a program slated to be based at San Jose airport, a city-run facility. During the comparable worth strike the union took advantage of this debate by picketing the airport heavily, particularly on the day Brown was scheduled to speak and the media were out in force.

These efforts were very successful. The San Jose strike made page one of the New York Times (7/6/81) and was covered in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the major newsweeklies (Time and Newsweek ), as well as on television news.^[28] One librarian commented that this "media blitz" put a lot of pressure on the city to work for a settlement (Fischer 1981, 2082–2083). But Bill Callahan, the AFSCME business agent who succeeded Maxine Jenkins, explained that he considered much of the strike effort to have been "media hype":

Out of the two thousand we represented, we said three-quarters were on strike. And there were probably only five hundred out at the height of the strike. But we created the image that a lot was happening. We said that sixteen out of seventeen libraries were closed down, and that was not true. We said the city was considering closing down the airport, and that was not true. We really could only last a few days. But we wanted to embarrass the mayor, who was more interested in her future political career. . . . And people did not really check the numbers out. But the im-

[27] This was precisely the issue of liability in the Washington State case, which was also filed soon after the Gunther decision (Remick 1980).

[28] In fact, Mayor Janet Gray Hayes and AFSCME business agent Bill Callahan were flown to New York during the strike to appear on "Good Morning America," the national morning news program of the ABC network. Ironically, the segment was never seen on the West Coast owing to the announcement that President Reagan had nominated a woman to the Supreme Court; apparently one feminist news item was considered sufficient (see Achenbach 1981).

age became true, because other women saw the image of San Jose and were impressed by it.^[29]

As Callahan maintained, capturing national attention for the demand that women's work be reevaluated was probably more significant than closing down city services. After all, unlike the private sector, the public sector has no profits to cut into with production stoppages or slowdowns; and public-sector budgets are politically negotiated more directly than profit rates can be. Regardless of the numbers on strike, after the nine days of media "blitzing" or "hyping" the settlement was reached that activists in San Jose and nationwide considered the first major victory for comparable worth.

Although the San Jose strike was relatively brief, like any strike situation it had an intense impact on those centrally involved. As business agent Callahan told me, "The strike was very dramatic. . . . It changed the lives of everyone involved. It was like being in gridlock for nine days on the L.A. freeway." Many of the strongest feelings of activists had to do with who went out on strike and who did not, as illustrated in these comments:

I went out on the sick-out and the strike. . . . Nine out of eleven in my section of Accounts Payable went on strike, and they all knew where I stood!

Every legal secretary went out on strike [fifteen or sixteen total]. We all belonged to the union. . . . I was proud because our jobs were at risk, but we went out anyway.

The five women I supervised pushed me to join the union originally. But then I went out and they didn't!. . . . I've been on strike twice in my working life, and I hope never again. It's so hard to strike, too hard; it's hard to see so many union members not go out.

My biggest disappointment was that the clericals from the council offices did not join up and did not go out with us.

As these comments suggest, comparable worth was only partly successful in San Jose as a tool for organizing women and building

[29] Some did check, but this never seemed to hurt the union's credibility. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported that "the strikers have not brought the city to a standstill. While the union contends that 50–60% of its workers are out, the City placed the number at closer to 20%" (Beyette 1981). For a good example of the prounion image, see Goligoski 1981.

participation in the union. Some women workers did not join the union, and some union members did not participate in the strike. While exact numbers are hard to come by, AFSCME Local 101 president Ferrero has stated that five hundred new members joined the union during the three major years of the comparable worth effort, 1979–1981 (Flammang 1986, 829); I suspect, though, that this claim was exaggerated. Ferrero told me, "Comparable worth was an attempt to organize the clerical workforce. And we met with some success. But it was always kind of astounding to me why we didn't have more success with that." Business agent Bill Callahan commented similarly: "Clericals are the most difficult to organize. Everyone was real disappointed that there wasn't any large rush in membership, especially after the strike was settled."

However, a woman activist pointed out that no concerted effort was made after the strike: "We didn't go into an organizing drive after that [the strike]. Nobody knew how to organize. On one day I did go around City Hall and I actually signed up twenty people, which was unheard of. But everyone was too tired out after the strike. We expected people to love us after we won the strike. But we really fell down as a union." And, reflecting on the whole experience, two activist librarians defended inactive women: "What you see as inactivity is really just a lack of urgency. Things are rolling along now"; and "They are low-paid people who don't have a lot of time between their jobs and their families to get involved. They don't have the money to go out to eat instead of fixing supper for their families. And they perceive that the leadership has them in mind."

After the strike period, with its excitement and intensity, the campaign for comparable worth slowed considerably in San Jose. Of course, this relaxing of effort was to an extent understandable. A great deal had been accomplished: significant wage adjustments were won, comparable worth was included in contract language, and the union became better incorporated into local politics. By the time of my interviews in 1984 and 1985 many activists described themselves as "burnt out," but smaller adjustments continued to be gained in successive contracts. In addition to the 1981 and 1982 adjustments won in the strike, $ 116,000 was spent on comparable worth in 1983, another $ 171,000 in 1984, and $ 341,000

in 1985 (Flammang 1986, 819–822). As one secretary told me: "As long as we have the precedent set for comparable worth, we'll keep asking for equity adjustments."^[30]

Women workers generally expressed agreement with business agent Callahan's conclusion, that is, that their primary accomplishment was the image of militance conveyed to so many women around the country. People commented that "they paved the way," or that "they were the first." Although a few resented this image,^[31] most I spoke with seemed very proud of their role. One secretary, a mother of six and a grandmother, was particularly inspirational:

I felt I'd done something really important. It was rather incongruous, myself and another woman, both of us grandmothers, going in front of the city council, and picketing! We'd say: "What are we doing here?" But my children were really proud of me. And I knew it was at least as important as the Geraldine Ferraro nomination. Maybe it was more important, because we were just the average people, everyday average people.^[32]

In terms of theory, the San Jose movement is significant in two respects. First, it illustrates the role a limited governmental reform may play in galvanizing political action for more far-reaching demands. Specifically, affirmative action reforms legitimated women's desires for mobility but provided actual benefit to very few, thus they both raised and frustrated women's aspirations. Struggling within the context of affirmative action, women also developed a collective sense of gender interests, which was reinforced by the strong feminist presence in the city. But as comparable worth emerged from these efforts, women's collective gender interests were reframed in terms of both gender and class, and many realized the only effective way to gain comparable worth was through union action.

Second, the San Jose movement illustrates the effectiveness

[30] Continued attention to the issue is necessary because, despite successive adjustments, full parity has not been reached. Moreover, as one clerical activist pointed out, as long as cost-of-living increases are proportional and the wage gap remains, male-dominated fields continue to gain disproportionately.

[31] One employee was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as commenting, "We're sort of the sacrificial lambs to the labor issue of the 80's" (Beyette 1981).

[32] It may already be difficult to recall the excitement with which women greeted the Democratic nomination of Representative Ferraro for vice president in 1984, the first appearance of a woman on the presidential ticket of a major party in American history.

of the "tough politics" approach employed by the union, which wrested at least partial control of the technically mystified job evaluation process from management "experts." Although such use of technocratic ideology generally characterizes contemporary bureaucratic institutions, the San Jose case exemplifies a largely successful attempt to counter the "depoliticization" of wage setting. Importantly, this was done without sacrificing the needed verification of wage disparities. On the national level, the union's "tough politics" contributed to the accumulation of evidence for comparable worth, while also conveying the image of an aggressive labor and feminist campaign. In the next chapter I will illustrate how the San Jose movement for comparable worth inspired female employees in Contra Costa County to press for higher wages both as women, and as women in particular class locations.