Igual remuneración por trabajo de igual valor (Apariencia y verdad de la discriminación salarial en la economía de mercado)

Abstract

The fight for equal pay, and the objective of non-discrimination in pay based on gender in particular, constitutes today one of the main manifestations of what we have been calling Social Justice for some time now. It is usually assumed that the origin of discrimination and remuneration inequities is in the spontaneous and free market, and that therefore the main opponent that would have to be faced - from the State, with public policies - would be the profitable capitalist company, ultimately judged to be the architect and main beneficiary of these reprehensible practices. This work offers a critique of this approach, and defends, against the most widespread opinion, that capitalist companies, precisely as guided by the profit motive, do not really have economic reasons to carry out discriminatory actions when they remunerate workers. The logic of the market and competition leads them, on the contrary, to tend to reward their employees according to the real value of their contribution to the company's productivity. It is therefore proposed that wage discrimination, when it exists - which it does - can only come from certain "bureaucratic interferences" - wage collectivization, remuneration technocracy, etc. - that affect the setting of workers' salaries. Finally, on these bases, a critique is carried out of the main public actions urged in matters of equal pay, in particular of the rule of equal pay for work of equal value and of the tools for evaluating -supposedly objective- jobs that have been implemented with the purpose of rationalizing workers' salaries and avoiding discriminatory practices.