Stevi mayor appointed to governor’s Task Force on Equal Pay for Equal Work

By Michael Howell

Stevensville’s Mayor Gene Mim Mack was recently appointed by Governor Steve Bullock to serve on the Equal Pay for Equal Work Montana Task Force. The purpose of the Task Force, which was formed in December 2013, is to gather information, furnish advice, and provide the Governor recommendations on policies and actions to insure that Montana workers earn equal pay for equal work, regardless of gender. Bullock wants Montana to become an equal pay leader state that sets national standards for public-private policy partnerships on closing the wage gap.
A fact sheet available on the Task Force’s website (www.equalpay.mt.gov) notes that nationally, women workers earned 77% of men’s median earnings in 2011. In Montana, however, women workers earned only 67.06% of the median earnings of their male counterparts ($19,614 compared to $29,250), putting the state in 39th place nationally for gender equity in pay.
“I’d match the Montana work ethic up against any other state in the nation, and 39th place for pay equity is unacceptable,” said Bullock. He said he established the Equal Pay for Equal Work Task Force to meet this challenge head on. He tapped two members of his cabinet “who understand this issue better than anyone” to co-chair the Task Force, Labor & Industry Commissioner Pam Bucy and Department of Administration Director Sheila Hogan.
According to the fact sheet, some of the pay difference between women and men can be explained because women are more likely to work part-time jobs than men. 67% of Montana working-age men and 48% of Montana working-age women work 35 or more hours a week. Montana men work an average of 40.8 hours per week while women work an average of 34.2 hours per week. This only includes hours at work. Women spend an hour more per day doing housework and caring for family members than men. Women also spend more time engaged in civic and religious activities than men. To account for fewer work hours in measuring gender pay inequity, you can compare only workers employed in full-time, year-round positions
The following statistics compare pay for full-time, year-round workers only:
• Montana women earned 74.62% of the median earnings of Montana men ($31,067compared to men’s $41,635), placing Montana 43rd in pay equity when considering full-time workers.
• Montana women earned more than men in the following occupational categories: architecture and engineering occupations; arts, design, entertainment, media, and sports occupations; and food preparation and serving related occupations. The worst occupations for pay equity in Montana were transportation occupations (women’s median pay at 49% of men’s median pay) and legal occupations (44.6%).
• No industry paid women more than men. The best industry for pay equity in 2011 was construction (women’s wages 91% of men’s), although only 6% of construction workers are women. Pay inequality was the worst in the finance and insurance industry, where women are paid only 40.3% of men’s wages, despite the fact that women comprise over 70% of the industry’s workforce.
• Montana private nonprofits had the greatest pay equity, with women at 89% of men’s median earnings. Local government workers came in second place at 86%, followed by federal workers (83%) and state workers (80%). Private for profit workers experienced the greatest pay inequity with full-time women workers earning only 66% of their male counterparts.
According to the fact sheet, in Montana, men and women are almost equally educated. More women than men have high school degrees (92.7% compared to 91.8%), but both 28.2% of men and women have a bachelor’s degree or higher. A greater portion of men have graduate or professional degrees.
Montana women had an unemployment rate of 4.8% in 2012, compared to 7.2% for Montana men. Nationally, the unemployment rates are much closer, with 7.9% of women and 8.2% of men unemployed. Montana’s large difference is likely because the male-dominated industries of wood-products manufacturing and construction lost the most jobs during the recession.
According to the fact sheet, women are less likely to be in the labor force than men, largely because women are more likely to take time off to care for their families. However, lower wages for women also play a role because of reduced incentive to work. 60% of Montana women are in the labor force, compared to 67% of Montana men.
Mayor Mim Mack may well have caught the governor’s eye for a position on the Task Force when he led the effort at the Town of Stevensville to examine the pay differentials at the town in terms of gender.
“We did an analysis of the town in this regard by looking at the type of jobs that have traditionally been staffed by men and the type of jobs that have traditionally been staffed by women and then looking at the responsibilities in those job categories and trying to apply some reasonable estimation of the worth of those job categories to the functioning of the town of 
Stevensville in delivering services.” He said it became apparent to him and to the Council, once they looked at the information, that jobs traditionally filled by women in the Town of Stevensville were paid less than jobs traditionally handled by men.
“But it seems clear that in terms of the responsibilities and importance of those jobs the type traditionally handled by women were at least equal to or in some cases exceeded the importance and responsibilities of those categories traditionally handled by men,” he said.
So he came up with a rough estimate of what the wage disparity was in these job categories and recommended some wage adjustments, phasing them in over a period of two fiscal years.
“One of the most telling comments on the issue after the council voted to correct this inequity as we identified it was from a female staff member,” he said. “She thanked us for our work and added, ‘I didn’t think anyone would ever notice’.”
“The people that are in these jobs are aware of the inequities that can exist and in some cases have to rely on a system to correct that, but it’s a system that some don’t have a lot of faith in because there hasn’t been a lot of corrective action, quite frankly,” said Mim Mack.
Mim Mack said that he was excited about working on the Task Force. He said the Task Force has done some interesting work which shows clearly that there is an inequity in terms of equal pay for equal work across the nation and the state.
“It varies throughout the state and varies across different categories of careers,” he said. “But in Montana we are recognizing without doubt that, broadly across the state there is an inequity that needs to be addressed.”
Mim Mack said he is hoping that there will be some governmental action taken as a result of the Task Force’s work to address what has been a well-recognized problem.
“I hope that we will not just study it and say, yes, it exists. I hope we can make some changes to provide meaningful results for women in particular,” he said.