Library Worklife

Volume 2, No. 12 • December 2005

Salaries & Pay Equity

Wage Gap Calculator

The WAGE Project (Women are Getting Even) is a non-profit organization that is addressing pay inequities. It was founded by Evelyn Murphy, author of Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men and What To Do About It . The site features stories by women who are not being paid like their male colleagues, information about sex discrimination cases and a wage gap calculator. See how your salary fares, according to the Special EEO File. This file "serve[s] as the primary external benchmark for comparing the racial, ethnic and gender composition of an internal workforce, within a specified geography and job category, and the analogous external labor market.” http://www.wageproject.org/content/gap_calc.

Raising Library Salaries in New South Wales, Australia

Delivered by: Jennefer Nicholson, Executive Director of the Australian Library and Information Association

Nicholson delivered this presentation at the 2005 International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Conference in Oslo, Norway, in August 2005. This case is worth noting because of the history of the pay equity movement in New South Wales, the involvement of librarians in a larger study on gender equity and the resulting increases in pay and changes to policy. Although this pay equity case occurred in the late 1990s and is briefly featured in the Advocating Better Salaries and Pay Equity Toolkit, it has much to offer us as many library workers, as well as the ALA-APA, are strategizing on how to identify and document inequities and how to minimize and eliminate them. It is classic study that is being discussed around the world—http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla71/papers/180e-Nicholson.pdf (7 pp).

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