Unions and unequal pay: The establishment of the “family wage”

Date01 March 2018
AuthorLilach LURIE
Published date01 March 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12015
International Labour Review, Vol. 157 (2018), No. 1
Copyright © The author 2018
Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2018
* Tel Aviv University, Department of Labor Studies, email: lilachlurie@post.tau.ac.il. The
Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University provided generous funding for the research.
The author wishes to thank the Lavon Institute for Labour Research. She also wishes to thank
Joyce Antler, David De Vries, Lisa Fishbayn Joffe, Pnina Lahav, Guy Mundlak, Amy Sessler
Powell, Debby Olins, Shulamit Reinharz and Steven Willborn. Initial versions of the paper were
presented at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (Brandeis University, 2014), the Association for
Israel Studies Conference (Israel, Sede-Boqer Campus, 2014) and the Equal Pay Conference
(Israel, Tel Aviv University, 2015), and the author wishes to thank the participants for their
helpful comments.
Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and
publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.
Unions and unequal pay:
The establishment of the “family wage”
Lilach LURIE*
Abstract. Equal pay laws in many OECD countries establish the right of men and
women to equal payfor work of equal value. Nevertheless, during the rst half of
the 20th century, before the enactment of equal pay laws, employers and unions
in several countries promoted unequal pay through “family wage” arrangements.
This article seeks to improve understanding of the historical and sociological ori-
gins of “family wage” arrangements through both comparative research and in-
depth historical archival research on family wage arrangements in Israel. It shows
that unions played a complex role in promoting family wage arrangements. While
their action reected their patriarchal understanding of society, they were also
guided by socialist principles.
Equal pay laws in many OECD countries establish the right of men and
women to equal pay for work of equal value. Nevertheless, during
the rst half of the 20th century, before the enactment of equal pay laws,
employers and unions in several countries promoted unequal pay through
“family wage” arrangements. This was the case in Israel, where the Male and
Female Workers Equal Pay Law of 1996 provides that men and women are
entitled to equal pay for the same work (Article 2). However, most sectoral
collective agreements include the right to a “family supplement”, which is
only available to men (Lurie, 2014). Under these agreements, a married man
whose wife does not work is entitled to a wage supplement, while a married
woman whose husband does not work is not entitled to the same supplement.

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