regard@ttidcc.UUCP (Adrienne Regard) (06/28/85)
>Sontag > But as to the question of *why* high school teachers are paid so much >less than MTSes as BTL, I think the answer is pretty obvious. There are >lots more qualified teachers ('qualified' as defined by the relevant schools) >than there are teaching positions. Conversely, there are a lot more jobs >for people with the qualifications to be an MTS at BTL than there are people >with those qualifications. The law of supply and demand ensures that the >equilibrium price for teachers will be low, as they are oversupplied. Market supply and demand doesn't ensure anything when the wage and price markets are controlled outside the market effects (i.e., by government, in this case, state and local). Currently in California there is a great shortage of teachers, and they are hiring people with BAs, but _no_ teaching credentials next year because of this shortage. However, the wages will be the same, and do not reflect the "demand" in the marketplace. There was another recent comment (NOT NECESSARILY BY JEFF) on "woman's work" vs. "dangerous work", and/or the evaluation of other job factors besides money where the writer stated that women took jobs that paid less because historically they haven't been primary wage earners. Looking at this from another direction, it is possible that certain jobs are seen as secondary in importance (regardless of the people who fill them) because the jobs have been historically filled by people seeking a second income. The job may not really be a secondary job in our presentsystem of values (I wouldn't consider teaching or nursing to be unimportant, myself {DISCLAIMER -- nobody said they were}) but the jobs are still _perceived_, and paid on the basis of, their historical secondary nature. What it seems to me that the "equal pay for equal work" issue is trying to accomplish is to re-evaluate jobs on the basis of their _current_ importance to our society, and pay them accordingly. Regardless of who performs them. Also, to assess their relative "desirablility" in the scheme of things. Used to be, a teacher had a pretty cush job, and could whip the students who got out of line. Now, they face societal condemna- tion for not accomplishing a set of overblown expectations, violence in the class-room, unsafe work conditions, as well as low pay. Garbage collec- tion used to be a dirty, but relatively safe profession. Now we dispose of radioactive wastes. Nursing was original done in the home by the family, then done by "lower class" untrained men and women, at hospitals run by nuns in some cases. As we learned more about medicine, it became a job for more trained workers, and probably a job for women for at least two reasons (1) the historical determination that woman did non-medical patient care (washing, comforting, cool cloths on hot foreheads) and (2) the take over of medical patient care by nurses during the war years because of the shortage of doctors. Of course, societal pressures gave men the jump on doctoring, and some of that still carries over to today. It's recognised in one profession that wages have to go up to gain workers. It hasn't yet been recognised in the others, even with the shortage of nurses and teachers. It goes without saying that nobody will agree on the weighting, and that government is likely to screw it up. That doesn't mean that the aim itself is mistaken or "unfair" in some reverse-discriminatory sense. There are factors that negate market efficiency -- primarily the "downward sticki- ness" of prices and wages, and cultural effects on the market place. "If we had an efficient market. . ." just doesn't go anywhere. We don't.