Pay Equity: Final Report

Pay Equity: Final Report

North Carolina Library Association

Using the Power of Information to Enrich Lives

Pay Equity Task Force

Final Report

Prepared by Dr. Paula M. Singer and Ms. Laura Francisco, PHR

The Singer Group, Inc. 12915 Dover Road, Reisterstown, MD21136

Table of Contents

Introduction and Background…………………………………..2
Project Phases …………………………………………………..3
Context –What is Pay Equity?………………………………………………4
Project Methodology: Survey Development and Implementation………..5
Public Library/Local Government Findings………………………………...7
Comparison to Teachers, Principals and Superintendents in K-12 Public Education …………………………………………………………………….20
Public Library Recommendations …………………………………………23
Findings: Academic Libraries/ Institutions of Higher Education……….25
Cautions Using the Data………………………………………………….. 35
Recommendation from Pay Equity Committee ………………………….36
Learnings on the Pay Equity Segment of this Project …………………..37
Project Evaluation …………………………………………………………..39
Future of the Library Workforce: Prepared by Mr. Donald W. Kingand Songphan Choemprayong ……………………..……………………….42

This publication was supported in whole by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.

The Singer Group, Inc.10/17/20181

This report of the Pay Equity Task Force of the North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) provides the goals, methodology and findings of the recent Pay Equity study. Definitions of Equal Pay for Equal Work vs. Pay Equity are included, as well as cautions, recommendations and suggestions for subsequent action. This document also reports the findings of the Future of the Library Workforce Study North Carolina pilot study, also sponsored by an Institute of Museum and Library Servicesgrant.

Introduction and Background

In 2005, during her term as president of NCLA, Pauletta Bracy organized a Task Force on Pay Equity to investigate issues of pay equity for library personnel in North Carolina. “Conventional wisdom,” she stated, “tells us that professions composed mainly of women have been compensated at a lower level than professions composed mainly of men.”

One of the initial actions of the Task Force was to conduct a literature search to determine what information might be available. The search revealed that the salary information available for North Carolina library personnel was dated and, as a result, the topic warranted further study. The Task Force determined that it needed to take additional steps to accomplish its charge: to educate librarians, library staff and library customers regarding the role and value of the library staff so that they may be compensated fairly.

Current NCLA President, Dr. Robert Burgin, supported the continuation of this investigation and the work of the Pay Equity Task Force. He, along with Pay Equity Project Chair Dr. Beverley Gass, obtained anLSTA grant and retained The Singer Group, Inc. to guide the process of project planning and implementation.

A Project Steering Committee was formed and included the following NCLA members:

Beverley Gass, DLS, GuilfordTechnicalCommunity College, Project Manager
Jenny Barrett Boneno, ForsythCounty Public Library
Dr. Pauletta Brown Bracey, School of LIS, North Carolina Central University
Robert Burgin, PhD, President, NCLA, Fiscal Manager
Keith Burkhead, GuilfordTechnicalCommunity College
Evelyn Council, FayettevilleStateUniversity
Jennie Hunt, GreensboroCollege
Connie Keller, ElonUniversity
Paula M. Singer, PhD, Consultant

Other partners working in conjunction with the Steering Committee included

Donald King, PhDUniversity of Pittsburgh
Jose-Marie Griffiths, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Mary Boone, State librarian
NCLA Executive Board

Dr. Jose Marie-Griffiths is the Dean of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and principal investigator of the national study, the Future of the librarians in the Workforce. Mr. Donald King is a principal investigatoron this project and worked closely with Mr. Robert Keene, University of Pittsburgh, UniversityCenter for Social and Urban Research, who developed the website and conducted the web-based survey for this project. Ms. Mary Boone, North CarolinaStatelibrarian, provided her support for this project, including encouraging participation throughout the state. NCLA’s Executive Board supported this project and shared their expertise throughout. We thank them for their encouragement and feedback.

This project consisted of three phases:

Phase One: Planning and Development of Project Methodology

Phase Two: Survey Development and Implementation: Public and Academic Libraries

Phase Three: Development of Web-based Educational Materials and Tools

ProjectPhases

Phase One: Planning and Development of Project Methodology

The Singer Group was retained to plan this project and provide an overview of pay equity. Dr. Singer met with the Pay Equity Task Force on September 30, 2005. In addition to planning the project, the agenda for this meeting included an education component, dialogue, and presentation of the following topics:

•Compensation Basics Review

•Equal Pay for Equal Work vs. Pay Equity

•The Wage Gap

•Sample Issues

•Examples

•Possible Reasons for Pay Inequity.

This presentation can be found as Appendix 1to this report.

Expansion of Goals

While the original goal of this project was to conduct a pay equity study of public library/local government and academic library/institutions of higher education, the task force expanded the goals.

During the initial phase of the project, Beverley Gass contacted the Director of the “The Future of Librarians in the Workforce” study at UNC-Chapel Hill to determine if there might be duplication. During those discussions, Dr. Griffiths and Mr. King proposed that they administer the web based pay equity survey as part of their larger survey about the library profession. At the same time, Future of the Librarians in the Workforce pilot became a part of the Pay Equity study and a partnership was formed.

The second expansion was to provide an additional outcome/deliverable: to provide libraries and local government participants with salary information collected from participating libraries and local jurisdictions.

In response to a question posed by a member of the NCLA Executive Board, the scope of the project expanded to include a comparative analysis of the salary and pay ranges of public school (K-12) teachers, principals and superintendents to the earning of librarians and library directors with similar education and experience in public libraries.

Phase Two: Survey Development and Implementation

During phase 2, the committee:

Designed a web-based survey to collect salary related information,

Conducted a pilot study survey for academic and public library as well as local government and higher education positions,

Conducted a survey to collect salary data for public library/local government jobs,

Conducted a survey for academic library/institutions for higher education jobs (including Library personnel in the North Carolina Community College System, The University of North Carolina; the North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities),

Collected and analyzed data, and

Designed and developed aNorth Carolinasalary database comparing salaries by library.

Phase Three: Development of Web-based Educational Materials and Tools

Materials and tools were prepared for use by library employees to enable them to advocate for improved compensation and pay equity. The goal for products created during this project is for them to be easily accessible and adaptable to individual and/or library needs. Actual products include:

Web accessible North Carolina library and local government salary database searchable by individual library and local government positions.
Web accessible North Carolinaacademic library and institution of higher education salary database searchable by library and academic positions.
Written report that describes the project including its purpose, methodology, data analysis and findings (this document).
Web-based materials and tools for librarians and library staff similar to those in the ALA-APA “Advocating for Better Salaries and Pay Equity Toolkit,”[1], and very accessible and practical. These tools consist of:
Brochure PowerPoint template that can be configured to meet local needs using web-based data.
PowerPoint presentation for training and information purposes.
Key speaking points.

These products are found on the NCLA website and as Appendix 2. The Pay Equity Committee is available to train NCLA members on their use.

Context: What is Pay Equity?

Definitions: Equal Pay for Equal Work and Pay Equity

The Equal Pay Act of 1964 prohibits paying different wages to men and women performing the same job. In other words, persons performing equal work must receive equal pay. The legislation was enacted to remedy a serious problem of employment discrimination in private industry and applies to all employers and labor organizations. To prevail in an Equal Pay Act claim, an employee must prove that she receives a lower wage than a man working in the same establishment (or a man must prove the same in a claim involving a woman). The jobs in question must be essentially the same, and require substantially equal skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.

Pay equity is defined by the National Committee on Pay Equity as evaluating and compensating jobs (even dissimilar jobs) based on their skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions, not on the people who hold the jobs (men or women). Pay equity is also known as comparable worth and equal pay for work of equal value. Pay equity is a solution to eliminating wage discrimination and closing the wage gap.

Despite significant efforts to realize Equal Pay for Equal Work, the current status of the concept is that the work of women is still undervalued. On average, women employed full-time earn 75¢ to each $1 earned by men. The gap between earnings is larger for women of color. Because the earnings gap is typically career-long, it also affects pension earnings, thus perpetuating the inequity into retirement. The gap reflects society’s undervaluing of the work of women relative to traditional male work. With minor fluctuations, the earnings gap has remained steady since the late 1950s, when data was first compiled, through 2003 (the last year for which such data is available). Evelyn Murphy, author of Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men and What To Do About It provides news, updates, gap calculators and other resources regarding the wage gap at her WAGE website:

IV. Project Methodology: Survey Development and Implementation

Survey Development

Five Committee meetings and seven teleconference calls with Committee members were held as of the time of the writing of this report. In addition, numerous conference calls were held with the project manager and UNC/Pittsburgh partners. Four compensation surveys were designed, including those for academic libraries, institutions of higher education, public libraries and local governments. Each survey included a cross-section of library and government positions. In order to facilitate ease of use by those completing the survey (and hence, increasing the rate of response), positions directly matching those included in the UNC Institute for Government Services Survey and the College and University Personnel Association (CUPA) survey were included so that participants having already completed either of those surveys could simply transfer their position data to NCLA’s pay equity survey.

Six pilot studies were conducted for the academic and public library surveys for insight into the type of data and response by organization/ role (e.g. Human Resources Department, Library Director, etc.) contacted. This data was useful for changing, streamlining and correcting the survey process. The invitation to survey participants focused on the project as a pay study instead of a pay equity study in order to stress the benefits to participants and to potentially increase the response rate. That is, those surveyed were informed that the salary data would be useful in terms of pay-setting or budget-planning in general, without reference to a specific interest in pay equity. Specific questions as well as space for comments were included in the pilot test, and follow-up phone calls to those who completed as well as those who did not complete the survey were made by Singer Group staff. Our goal was to learn as much as possible about how to simplify the process and hence, increase participation. Thank you notes were sent to all participants by both Dr. Gass and The Singer Group.

Public Library/ Local Government Survey and Findings

An analysis of the pilot study findings pointed to the complexity and magnitude of the project leading to a decision to issue one community survey at a time. The public library survey was issued first.

To enhance participation, numerous public relations activities were undertaken. A description of the project was given a prominent place on the NCLA website; the State librarian promoted the project at various presentations state-wide; the project director attended the North Carolina Public library directors Association (NCPLDA) and asked public library directors to encourage their colleagues in local government to participate in the survey; Ms. Hunt wrote articles and notes forTar Heel Libraries; and Dr. Gass asked for questions from NCLA Board members and provided them with a several page response (Appendix 3). A project logo was used on all correspondence and related materials providing a unifying brand.

One thing The Singer Group has learned over time which was reinforced during the pilot was the need for personal contact follow-up. Accordingly, to help them further market this project, an administrative portal was designedby our survey partner at Pittsburgh that allowed all committee members to track the status of those issued a survey – by name, library/jurisdiction, phone number and e-mail address. A schedule was developed for committee members’ use in calling potential participants on their assigned list to encourage participation (a “script” was provided by the consultant) and their use in thanking participants upon completion of the survey.

In order to increase participation, surveyed organizations were informed that they would have access to the project’s customizable database for use in comparing their library’s jobs with others in libraries and local government statewide for:

Compensation and budget planning
Updating salary plans and compensation systems
HR planning, including recruiting, retention and succession planning efforts, and
Assessing pay equity (this benefit was geared more toward the library than government participants).

The project database gives libraries the data they need to help “make a case” to local officials and funders in the public sector and deans and officials in academia for fair and competitive pay.

The following 12 jobs were included in the public library survey:

The Singer Group, Inc.10/17/20181

•library director

•library division manager

•senior librarian

•librarian

•circulation supervisor

•library associate

•bookmobile driver

•circulation clerk

•technical processing clerk

•systems administrator

•PC technician

•web master

The Singer Group, Inc.10/17/20181

Seventeen jobs were included in the survey to local government entities:

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•finance director

•public health director

•information technology director

•county engineer

•senior planner

•civil engineer

•solid waste truck driver

•tax clerk

•office assistant

•zoning code enforcement officer

•building maintenance worker

•recreation program supervisor

•GIS technician

•planner

•systems administrator

•PC technician

•web master

The Singer Group, Inc.10/17/20181

During data analysis, library and local government jobs were compared based on the following criteria: similarity of educationaland experiential requirements, scope, effort, responsibility and working conditions. Table 1 shows the comparisons.[2]

Table 1: Library Jobs in Survey and Corresponding City/County Government Jobs

Library Jobs / City/County Government Jobs
library director / finance director
public health director
information technology director
librarian / senior planner
civil engineer
zoning code enforcement officer
recreation program supervisor
planner
systems administrator
library division manager / county engineer
civil engineer
senior planner
circulation supervisor / recreation program supervisor
planner
library branch manager / senior planner
planner
civil engineer
library associate / zoning code enforcement officer
circulation clerk / tax clerk
office clerk
bookmobile driver / solid waste truck driver
building maintenance worker
systems administrator / systems administrator
web master / web master
PC technician / PC technician

Findings

The survey was sent to all public libraries (79) and local governments (110) in the state. Sixty-two (62), or 78% of public libraries and fifty (50), or 45% of local governments responded. In addition, salary data from University of North Carolina’s Institute for Government Service’s (IGS) database[3] for eleven (11) non-responding libraries and 56 non-responding local governments was added to the database. Tables 2 and 3 are based on statewide data and show the number of employees, budget and populations of the responding government jurisdictions. For added depth of data, mean and median figures are provided, as well as actual low and high responses for each category (government and library).

Table 2: Composite Characteristics of North CarolinaLocal Governments, n=50

Full-time Employees / Part-time Employees / Budget / Population Count
Low / 55 / 9 / $42,000 / 4,149
Mean / 758 / 110 / $142,425,428 / 111,240
Median / 463 / 63 / $63,048,642 / 57,000
High / 5,079 / 638 / $1,235,506,233 / 850,178

Table 3: Composite Characteristics of Public Libraries, n=62